by Jean Johnson
Both of them widened their eyes. Dark violet glitter covered everything, the hues of the Library defenses. It faded slowly, but had thickened in oval spheres around the bodies of all of the survivors. Protecting those survivors, even down to a child of five or so, hiccuping and wailing for her mother, her tear-streaked face scrunched up in fear. That mother darted in from the side, floundering on the shattered bits of wood and scraps of cloth that were all that remained of a somewhat large and popular inn.
She snatched up her child, hugged and babbled, stroked and soothed . . . their shields merging as one. Unconscious shields. External dark purple ones, Pelai realized. Library magics.
Krais, surveying upward as well as outward, stiffened and grabbed at Pelai’s shoulder. He pointed over their heads. “There! See it? Move your shield so I can get up to it!”
Pelai didn’t bother to ask how he knew she was the one to have shielded everyone from falling debris. Seeing him crouch in preparation for a tattoo-assisted jump, she did him one better. A swoop of her hand shaped the energies flowing throughout Mendham, lifting him on a glowing platform toward that hovering, incongruously intact, violently violet-glowing object. A board of some sort? A chalk tablet? Whatever it was, it was thin and flat and rectangular, and it . . . rested at the exact angle of a writing desk, Pelai realized.
Staggering a little, Krais balanced himself on his unexpected lift. When he came into range, he peered at the . . . pages? Two rectangular sheets the size of a largish book, folded over and nested together. The kind that came from from a quire, the bundles of nested pages that were stitched together to form a set number of pages in a typical bound, not glued, book. With his unaided eye, it just looked like words surrounded by blocks of illustrations, most of which were interwoven together with geometrically drawn knotworks in sometimes complimentary and sometimes clashing hues. With the monocle’s help, he saw the description for a spell that made him blanch, buried beneath that dangerous, protective spell.
Layers of words, some of which were meant to be spoken, the rest never meant to be said aloud at all. Spoken words that were only a fraction of what this scroll showed, thanks to his borrowed viewing lense . . . though technically this came from a book, not from a scroll.
“Krais?” Pelai called up. “What is it?”
Raised the son of a mid-level librarian, Krais did not want to say what it was out loud. Activating their linking tattoo, he gave her a close-up of the object, and let the spell muffle their speech from all other eyes and ears. “It’s a set of spells torn from a book, wrapped in the strongest defensive spells of the Great Library. It . . . it should have exploded while still in the Library, but somehow it didn’t. And from the angle at which it rests . . . I think someone had time to study it, and make a copy of everything on these pages, before that spell exploded.”
Pelai’s eyes widened. Part of her still peered upward at his uplifted body, standing on a platform of thickened air. Part of her attention focused on the pages just within arm’s reach of him. “Of course! That’s why nobody was harmed—at least, nobody innocent! And that’s why the only intact pieces of furniture and belongings down here on the ground level are books and bits of shelves!”
Krais nodded. “Mother always told us even the strongest of Great Library protections were designed to punish thieves, not innocent visitors to the stacks. And certainly not other books. But, Pelai . . . Pelai’thia, this piece of the Library’s books . . . this is dangerous knowledge. This is like what Anya’thia asked me about.”
He twisted around to look down over the two, three stories of height separating them, giving her a pointed stare until she nodded slowly, remembering. Turning back to the quietly hovering pages, he shook his head.
“We cannot leave this floating here. Not even just to wait for the highest ranks of the Library’s hierarchy to come retrieve it. I . . . it might explode again, but I’m going to have to try to contain and transport it. I just hope it can sense my intent to return it, not steal or read any further.” He paused, then added dryly, “The hard part is trying to remember exactly where Mother keeps her dangerous documents folio. It’s lined with all manner of runes for cushioning and soothing the Library’s protective spells. That, and I don’t know if it’s cleared to transport something like this. I think this is from the Forbidden Annex, so it’s bound to be very volatile without the right handling spells.”
“Then I suggest you don’t even try!” Pelai shot back, giving his lofted figure an eye-rolling look. “Give me a few moments to contact Anya’thia, and she can Gate the right kind of folder over to protect it for safe transport. Or even just pull it through a mirror-Gate . . . which is probably the safest option. Just stay up there and make sure no one and nothing gets close enough for a look.”
“That, I can do,” he reassured her, and fell warily, watchfully silent while she ignored the crowds gathering below. Those upturned faces, curious as to what he was up to, made Krais wrinkle his nose and dredge up a mist-making spell, fogging the air between their heads and his feet. Obscuring the pages from above, and from all directions around as well.
It took several minutes, but eventually Anya’thia’s face appeared in the air alongside Pelai’s. She peered at the folded sheets, frowning—her hazel eyes widened. The Elder Librarian quickly grabbed for something, chanted, and pulsed spell energies through an opening just in front of the missing pages. The magic wrapped around the folded, heavily inked sheets, and pulled them past the invisible line that marked the boundary of her mirror-Gate.
As soon as it passed safely through without exploding again, Krais slumped a little where he stood. “Thank you, Elder Librarian. Was that, ah, from the Forbidden Annex?”
“It indeed was . . . and thanks to your help in securing it, on top of carefully guiding the dictates of prophecy, you have just done far more for Mendhi today than kidnapping any Living Host ever could. Thanks to you, Mendhi has a solid chance at surviving past the point of the next Convocation . . . and I’ll be certain to let the other Elders know, in no uncertain terms. I am supposed to stay neutral in politics . . . but I am encouraged to bludgeon the others with the facts in any matter. I will push heavily and bludgeon mightly to have your two months of penance commuted to time already served.”
“Thank you, Anya’thia. Do consider me in return, if you ever need a Painted Warrior for some task.”
She smiled at him, wrinkling her nose. “I may have to pass. Something tells me you’re going to be working for Pelai in that capacity.”
“I was just about to say, he’s mine, yes,” Pelai quipped. “Thank you, Anya, for fetching the manuscript home. If you’ll excuse us, I need to take Krais back to his parents’ home. I do believe it’s time for him to move out as well.”
Nodding, Anya’thia closed her connection to their scrying link. Krais balanced carefully while she brought him back down. Brown-clad soldiers had arrived on the scene, comforting the dazed inhabitants of the inn, asking them questions, trying to figure out what had happened and what anyone might have seen. One of them—a dakim-captain in rank from the number of painted pei-slii on his breastplate—crossed to the pair now that Pelai’thia’s attention was no longer occupied with looking upward.
“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to answer several questions on what that object was that was floating up in the sky.”
Rolling her eyes in impatience, Pelai introduced herself. “I, Dakim, am Pelai’thia, Elder Mage. That hovering object was a manuscript stolen from the Great Library, which the Elder Librarian has safely recovered.”
The dakim eyed her from head to foot, taking in her white knee-length taga and black Disciplinarian boots. “You look more like a wanna-be Disciplinarian than like you’re dressed with the dignity of the Elder Mage.”
Krais touched the arm reaching reflexively for her flogger. He addressed the soldier, not her, however. Mainly because this was not the first time go
ods and property had been damaged by exploding books that should never have been taken out of the Library. Or rather, never for quite so long, and always on a much, much smaller scale than this, before now. Still, he was his mother’s son, and knew what had to be done.
“It is not your business to decree what an Elder of the Hierarchy of Mendhi can or cannot wear, Dakim. You are not the Dakim’thio . . . and even if you were him, you would still have no rights outside of your purview,” Krais told him. “Tend to the survivors, try to find out who was staying in the room that was positioned up there, see if anyone can draw his or her face from sketches and memories, and reassure the innkeeper and the patrons who lost their belongings that the Great Library will pay to have everything replaced. Make sure to truthspell anyone making a claim on what they lost, and to write it all down accurately.”
The captain had the grace to look a little abashed. He tipped his head ruefully, muttering, “That much, I am very vigilant about. The Elder Exchequer never takes kindly to anyone attempting to exaggerate a reparations claim on government funds—I had an aunt who tried to pull that, when she put in a claim that a tree tended by the city fell on her house. She was lucky to still possess two tagae and a pair of salaps before Hala’thia got done.
“Now, if you are done here . . . the two of you are blocking efforts to retrieve what few belongings may have survived this wreck, so either go and clear the area, or stay and help. I suggest you stay and help,” the officer added, and pointed up at the sky, which had darkened from the sheets of dust and further debris. “If you are the Elder Mage, milady, I kindly ask that you pile all of that suspended debris in a way that does not block the streets or the docks, but in a way that the owners can still sort through it to find whatever else survived, and claim their remaining rightful belongings.”
Pelai blushed and cleared her throat. “Oh. Right. I’m not feeling any strain from holding it all aloft . . . so I kind of forgot it was up there. I’ll, um, sort it into piles for what can be salvaged, and what needs to be carted off to the rubble pits.”
“I’ll help,” Krais offered. “I’ve enough power to float loads of it out to the landfills for an hour or two without breaking a sweat.”
“Good,” the soldier stated. “I’m tasked with the demand of keeping this section of the city clean and tidy . . . so get to work, if you’re going to linger down here. No offense is meant, if you are the new Elder Mage, but I am responsible for this part of the city. Cooperate, or evacuate.”
Pelai and Krais both rolled their eyes at the dakim’s blunt speech, but they chose to cooperate anyway.
* * *
* * *
Three hours later, Krais levitated yet more bundles, this time his own things, and those few of his brothers’ possessions he was certain they would never want sold but hadn’t had the ability to carry away into exile. It was possible his brothers might seek a pardon from the Gods Themselves at the next convocation. Not highly probable, given all the prophecies involved, but . . . Krais preferred to act out of love, and that meant out of hope.
His father had glared at Krais’ presence for a long moment before grunting and retiring into his writing room, no doubt to sit in there and brood. Thankfully, he had not protested his remaining son’s presence, even though Pelai’thia was not physically with him. They could have ordered staff from among the Hierarchy of Mages to magically levitate everything out the door, or even hired Temple servants to work for extra pay on Family Day, hauling it by muscle power, but that would have been neither discreet nor efficient. Instead, Pelai had returned to her residence a few buildings away to open a mirror-Gate between the two locations, an easy enough task with all the power of the Temple Fountain at her command.
“My son . . .”
His mother’s voice caught at his ears. Krais turned away from unloading the last of his wardrobe drawers into one of the rectangular baskets Pelai floated through the invisible intersection plane of the mirror-Gate, placed up at the ceiling so that he couldn’t accidentally wander through it. He found his mother standing there with one hand clasped around the other elbow, an unhappy look pulling down the edges of her lips.
“Yes, Mother?” he asked, keeping his tone mild and neutral. Inviting her to speak her mind, if she needed.
“Are you really . . . Are you denouncing us as your parents?” she asked, squaring her shoulders a little and folding both arms across her chest. “Turning your backs on your family . . . on Family Day? Never to see us again?”
“That’s up to you,” he told her. “At least, where I am concerned. And you’ll literally see me in the days and years to come, as I am staying here in Mendham. Specifically, at Pelai’thia’s side. She has my loyalty and my service. I know she will never seek to punish me beyond all sense and reason—I urge you, Mother, to see that Father gets evaluated by a Healer who specializes in degeneration of the emotions and the mind.
“He may be suffering from the first warning signs of dementia,” Krais added softly. “Things like clinging to ideas that increasingly have no substantial merit to support them, heightened irritability, irrationality over letting go of ideas that worry him, even when they have no basis in facts anymore. . . . If there is something wrong with him, the Healers might be able to give him treatments.”
“Like they did with your great-grandfather,” Karei murmured. She leaned against the frame of the door to his bedroom. “You were too little to remember him, but . . . he started to cling to angry ideas. I don’t know if that is what’s wrong with Dagan. He may just be angry because he made a lot of grand promises to various people around the nation, and they keep reminding him he is now unable to fulfill any of them. Before your arrival, I had to talk him down several times out of demanding that you either go steal the portable Fountain anyway and bring it back, or be disowned and denounced as his sons until you could.”
“ . . . Thank you, Mother, for that,” Krais managed, blinking away a sting of pain from his eyes before it could turn to liquid and fall as tears. “I tuned out a lot of his ranting on the months of the voyage home. I . . . had my own troubles to deal with.”
“Oh?” she asked, and moved forward, crossing the space separating them. Aldis Karei lifted her palm to his cheek, cupping it. “What bothered my baby, my eldest son?”
“Old nightmares,” he muttered, blushing and refusing to let the subject linger on what kind. Old nightmares only in the sense that dreams of getting aroused by floggings and such no longer scared him since his return to Mendham roughly two weeks ago. He cleared his throat. “Now I have a whole new host of memories to possibly plague my sleep and wreck my awaiting dreams.”
Murmuring soothing sounds, his mother stepped in close enough to wrap her arms around him. She rubbed his back, no longer able to cradle his head on her chest since he’d outgrown that height by the time he was seventeen, but still wanting to comfort her baby boy. Even if just a few hours ago she’d been spitting-and-clawing mad at her children.
Hugging her back, Krais wondered idly if he’d have such problems with Pelai. He had seen the navel tattoo empowering the designs inked on her skin; she hadn’t picked the version that converted fertility into magic for those who were not born one of the one-in-fifty who could claim the title of mage. We’ll have to talk about whether or not we want children . . . and if so, will I want to ask for a clipping from Father’s spirit tree, or from Mother’s? At this point . . .
At this point, he leaned toward renaming himself Aldis Krais. His mother had problems of her own, but she was more stable than her husband. What stopped him were his brothers. We are the Puhon Brothers. Prophecies have been written about us. Unless and until those prophecies unfold and come to an end . . . I will remain a Puhon to honor my love for my siblings, and possibly even after. I don’t know.
I don’t even know if I will ever see them again, since they’re destined to wind up at the Convocation of Gods and Man, if we’ve success
fully directed everything.
It felt good to hug his mother, to be hugged by her. To just be held by the arms he had grown up trusting and loving. Eventually, she sighed and moved back, and managed to smile up at him. “Well, we kind of missed Family Day luncheon . . . but you are more than welcome to join us for supper. Your father will brood, but I’ll elbow him a few times until he gets over it.”
Krais wrinkled his nose in an apologetic grimace. “Actually, I’ve already accepted an invitation to join the Elder Mage when she visits her family for supper in a few hours.”
Brows rising, Karei leaned back at that. “You accepted an invitation to a Family Day meal, without telling your own mother you’d found a potential mate? When, exactly, were you going to give me the time needed to scrutinize her for rejection or approval, hmm?”
“You already know her, Mother!” Krais protested. “I’m well over twenty years old, and this isn’t three centuries ago, either. I don’t need parental approval to select and marry a mate!”
She poked him in the chest. “I am your mother, I will always be your mother, and I will indulge all I like in the prideful sin of demanding the right to approve of your mate! . . . I just want you to find a woman who will be as wonderful a match for you as your father has been for me. That’s all.”
Catching her hand, he lifted her fingers to his cheek, pressing them there. “I have, Mother. I truly have.”
“Hmphf. Well, you’ll still have to bring her by for luncheon next week, since it’s a little too late for luncheon with your family today.” She hesitated, then peered past him at the sitting room of his suite, with most of its books and personal mementos stripped away. “Do you . . . need any help? I haven’t seen anything floating or being carried out . . .”
He pointed up at the ceiling. “It’s not necessary. Pelai’thia is using a mirror-Gate to transport everything directly to her new residence.”
