Percepliquis trr-6

by Michael J. Sullivan

  Alric appeared as if he would speak again, but then scowled and moved on. Arista offered her brother a sympathetic look as she passed him.

  They continued in silence, following the light. On occasion Royce whispered for them to wait, and they sat in silence, tense and worried. Hadrian kept his hands on the pommels of his swords, watching and listening. Then Royce would return and off they would go once more.

  They moved to a much wider boulevard. The buildings became more elaborate, taller, often with facades of chiseled columns. Pillars lined the avenue, tall monoliths covered in detailed engravings, epigraphs and images of men, women, and animal figures. One very large building was totally shattered, forcing them to climb over a mountain of rubble. The going was treacherous, with slabs of broken rock the size of houses that were loose enough to shift with their weight. Driven to inch along ledges and crawl through dark holes, they all welcomed a rest on the far side.

  They sat on what had once been a great flight of marble steps, which now went nowhere and looked down the city’s main road. Each building was tall and made from finely carved stone, usually a white marble or rose-colored granite. Fountains appeared intermittently along the wide thoroughfare, and as he stared, Hadrian could imagine a time when children ran in the streets, splashing in the pools and swinging from the spear arm a statue held out. He could almost see the colorful awnings, the markets, the crowds. Music and the smells of exotic food would fill the air, much like in Dagastan, only here the streets were clean, the air cool. What a wonderful place it must have been, what a wonderful time to have lived.

  “A library,” Myron whispered as they sat, his eyes fixed on a tall circular building with a small dome and a colonnade surrounding it.

  “How do you know?” Arista asked.

  “It says so,” he replied. “On top there: IMPERIAL REPOSITORY OF TOMES AND KNOWLEDGE, roughly translated, at least. I don’t suppose I could…” He trailed off, his eyes hopeful.

  “If you go in there, we might never get you out,” Hadrian said.

  “We need to camp and we still don’t know anything about the horn,” Arista said. “If Myron could find something…”

  “I’ll take a look,” Royce said. “Hadrian, come with me. Everyone else wait here.”

  Just as if he were on a job, Royce circled the library twice, making a careful study of the entrances and exits before moving to the two great bronze doors, each decorated in ornate sculptured relief depicting a bisected scene of a man handing a scroll and a laurel to a younger man amidst the aftermath of a great battle. Hadrian noticed a river and a familiar-looking tower at the edge of a waterfall in the upper right. The doors were marred badly, dented and bent, bearing marks from a large blunt hammer.

  Hadrian slowly, quietly drew one sword. Royce set down and hooded the lantern, then pulled the doors open and slipped inside. One of the many rules Hadrian had learned from the start was never to follow Royce into a room.

  That was how it all had gone so bad in Ervanon.

  Royce had slipped into the Crown Tower as delicately as a moth through a window. Yet unlike on the previous night, the room was not empty. A priest sat in the small outer chamber. It did not matter, as he had not seen or heard Royce, but then Hadrian blundered in. The man screamed. They ran-Royce one way, Hadrian the other. It was a coin flip that Hadrian won. The guards came around the tower on Royce’s side. While they were busy chasing and wrestling Royce down, Hadrian made it back to the rope. He was safe. All he had to do was climb back down, retrieve his horse from the thickets, and ride away. That was exactly what Royce expected him to do, what Royce would have done in his place, but back then Royce did not know him.

  Hadrian heard the three taps from inside the library and, grabbing the lantern, crept inside. It was black and he was met with a terrible confluence of smells. The dominant odor was a thick burnt-wood scent, but a more pungent rotted-meat stink managed to cut through. From the darkness, he heard Royce say, “We’re clear, light it up.”

  Hadrian lifted the lantern’s hood to reveal a scorched hall. Burned black and filled with piles of ash, the room was still beautiful beyond anything else Hadrian had ever seen. Four stories tall, the walls circling him were marvelously crafted tiers of marble arcades. Towering pillars ringed the coffered dome and supported the great arches joining the arcades to each other. Around the rim, a colonnade of white marble was interspersed with lifelike bronze statues of twelve men, each of which had to be at least twenty feet tall. From the floor they appeared life-sized. Great chandeliers of gold hung around the perimeter. The black cracked remains of tables formed a circular pattern of desks with a great office in the center. A fresco painting of wonderful scenes of various landscapes formed the lower part of the dome, while the greater portion, made of glass, now lay in shards scattered across the beautiful mosaic floor.

  In the center of the room, near the office bench, was its only inhabitant. Surrounded by a few singed books, papers, quills, three lanterns, and an oilcan lay what remained of an old man. He was on his back, his head resting on a knapsack, his legs wrapped in a blanket. Like Bernie, this man was dead, and as he had Bernie, Hadrian recognized him.

  “Antun Bulard,” he said, and knelt beside the body of the elderly man he had befriended in Calis. He was not as ravaged by death as Bernie-no sea crabs here. Bulard, who had always been pale in life, was now a bluish gray, his complexion waxy. His white hair was brittle and spectacles still rested on the end of his nose.

  “Bernie was right,” Hadrian told Bulard. “You didn’t survive the trip, but then again, neither did he.”

  Hadrian used the old man’s blanket to wrap him up and together they carried his body out and set it off to the side under a pile of rocks. The smell lingered, but it was not nearly as pungent.

  When the others arrived, they stared with disappointment, Myron most of all. Exhaustion won out and they threw their packs down while Royce relocked the door.

  Myron looked up, his eyes scanning the tiers and countless aisles where books must have once lay, but now they housed only piles of ash, and Hadrian noticed the monk’s hands tremble.

  “We’ll rest here for a few hours,” Royce said.

  “Here?” Gaunt asked. “The smell is awful, charcoal and something else… What is that disgusting-” Gaunt asked.

  “We found a body,” Hadrian told them. “Another member of the last team the Patriarch sent in, from the same group as Bernie, from the Harbinger… and a friend. We took his remains out.”

  “Was he burned?” Myron asked fearfully.

  “No.” Hadrian placed a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think anyone was here when it caught fire.”

  “But it was burned recently,” the monk said. “It wouldn’t still smell like this after a thousand years.”

  “Perhaps our resident sorceress can do something about the stench?” Gaunt asked.

  This brought stern looks from Hadrian, Alric, and Mauvin.

  “What?” Degan asked. “Are we to continue to tiptoe around it? She is a magician, a mage, a wizardess, a sorceress, a witch-pick whatever term you prefer. Beat me senseless if you like, but after our little boat ride, there is no debating the reality of that fact.”

  Alric strode toward Gaunt with a threatening look and a hand on his sword.

  “No.” Arista stopped him. “He’s right. There’s no sense hiding it or pretending. I suppose I am a-Did you say wizardess? That one’s not too bad.” As she said this, her robe glowed once more and a mystical white light filled the chamber with a wonderful brilliance, as if the moon had risen in their midst. “That’s fine-best that it is out in the open, best that we can all say it. Royce is an elf, Hadrian a Teshlor, Mauvin a count and a Tek’chin swordsman, Alric a king, Myron a monk with an indelible mind, Magnus a dwarven trap smith, Degan the Heir of Novron, and I–I am a wizardess. But if you call me a witch again, I promise you’ll finish this journey as a frog in my pocket. Are we clear?”

  Gaunt nodded.

&nb
sp; “Good. Now, I am exhausted, so you will have to live with the smell.”

  With that, Arista threw herself down, wrapped up in her blankets, and closed her eyes. As she did, the robe dimmed and faded until at last it was dark. The rest of them followed her lead. Some swallowed a handful of food or a mouthful of water before collapsing but no one spoke. Hadrian tore open another packaged meal, surprised at how few he had left. They had better find the horn soon or they might all end up like Bulard.

  What happened to him?

  It was the question he drifted to sleep on.

  Hadrian felt a nudge and opened his eyes to Mauvin’s face and wild hair hanging over him.

  “Royce told me to wake you. It’s your watch.”

  Hadrian sat up groggily. “How long and who do I wake?”

  “You’re last.”

  “Last? But I just fell asleep.”

  “You’ve been snoring for hours. Give me the chance to get a little sleep.”

  Hadrian wiped his eyes, wondering how he could best estimate the length of an hour, and shivered. He always felt chilled when he woke up, before his blood got running properly. The cool subterranean air did nothing to help. He wrapped his blanket around his shoulders and stood up.

  The party all lay together like blanket-shrouded corpses, bundles of dark lumps on the floor. Each had swept the broken glass back and it clustered in a ring marking the border of their camp. The lantern was still burning, and off to one side, near where he had found Bulard’s body, huddled in a ball and wrapped in his hooded frock and blanket, sat Myron.

  “Tell me you did not stay up reading,” he whispered, sitting down next to him among the piles of papers and books, which Myron had neatly stacked.

  “Oh no,” he replied. “I was beside Mauvin when Alric woke him for his watch. I just couldn’t get back to sleep, not in here. These papers,” he said, picking up a handful. “They were written by Antun Bulard, a famous historian. I found them scattered. He was here. I think he is the one who died.”

  “He used to say he couldn’t remember anything unless he wrote it down.”

  “Antun Bulard?” Myron looked astonished. “You’ve met him!”

  “I traveled briefly with him in Calis. A nice old man and a lot like you in many ways.”

  “He wrote the The History of Apeladorn, an incredible work. It was the book I was scribing the night you found me at the Winds Abbey.” Myron lifted the parchments, holding them up to Hadrian. “His legs were broken. They left him here with some food and water and the lantern for light. His notes are sloppy, lines running over one another. I think he wrote them in the dark to save oil for reading, but I can read most of it. He was with three others, a Dr. Levy, Bernie-who we laid to rest-and Sentinel Thranic, who I gather was their leader. Antun wasn’t very pleased with him. There was also a man named Staul, but he died before they set sail.”

  “Yes, we knew them too. What happened?”

  “Apparently, they acquired the Harbinger from a warlord of some sort called Er An Dabon. He also arranged for a Ghazel guide to take them into the city. All went well, if not a bit tense, until they arrived at this library. Here they found evidence that this had been the last stand for a previous team and he mentioned the names Sir Gravin Dent, Rentinual, Math, and Bowls.”

  “So it was them.”

  “They apparently barricaded themselves inside, but the doors were forced open. Bulard’s group found their gear, bloodstains, and lots of Ghazel arrows-but no bodies.”

  “No, they wouldn’t.”

  “Antun suggested they leave him to sit and read while they went on to explore for the horn.”

  “So the library-”

  “It was fine- perfect, to use the words of Antun Bulard-filled with thousands and thousands of books. Bulard wrote, ‘There is perhaps a hundred tomes on birds-just birds-and above those, another hundred on the imperial seafaring mercantile industries. I followed an aisle back to a swirling brass stair that corkscrewed up to yet another floor, like an attic, and it was filled to the ceiling with records of the city-births, deaths, land titles, and transfers-amazing!’ ”

  “What happened?”

  “Thranic burned it,” Myron said. “They had to hold Antun down. After that, he refused to go any farther. Thranic broke both his legs to prevent him from escaping the city and left him here, just in case they had a question he needed to answer.

  “Antun salvaged these from the ash.” He pointed to the small stack of five books. “He lived for nearly three months. In the end, with the oil gone, he was trying to feel the words on the page with his fingertips.”

  “Nothing about what happened to the others?”

  “No, but he appeared to realize something of tremendous importance. He began writing about it in earnest, but it must have been after the oil ran out and I suspect starvation was taking its toll. His quill work was abysmal. He wrote something about a betrayal, a murder, and something he referred to as the Great Lie, but the only thing he wrote clearly was the phrase Mawyndule of the Miralyith, which was underlined twice. The rest is indecipherable, although it goes on for ten more pages and there are many exclamation points. Only the last line is fully readable. It says, ‘Such a fool was I, such fools are we all.’ ”

  “Any idea what this Maw-drool-eh of the Mirrorleaf is?”

  “Maw-in-due-lay and Meer-ah-leeth,” he corrected. “The Miralyith is, or was, one of the seven tribes of elves.”

  “Seven tribes?”

  “Yes, actually Bulard wrote of them in his first book years ago. There were seven tribes of elves named from the ancestors that founded them. The Asendwayr, known as the hunters; the Gwydry, the farmers; the Eilywin, the builders; the Miralyith, the mages; the Instarya, the warriors; the Nilyndd, the crafters; and the Umalyn, the priests of Ferrol. Everyone knows that Ferrol created the elves first and for thousands of years only they and the creations of Muriel existed on the face of Elan. Bulard discovered that there was friction from the beginning. Elves once fought elves, clan against clan. A feud existed between the Instarya and the Miralyith to where-”

  Arista quivered in her sleep and let out a muffled cry.

  “She’s been like that all night,” Myron told him.

  Hadrian nodded. “She told me she’s been suffering from nightmares, but I think they are more than dreams.” Hadrian watched her. As he did, he felt Myron’s hand on his. Looking up, he saw the monk offer him a sad smile.

  Hadrian drew his hand away. “I think I’d better start waking people.”

  Myron nodded as if he understood more than Hadrian had meant to say.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE W HITE RIVER

  Mince was convinced that the vast majority of his ten long years-soon to be eleven-had been spent with frozen feet. Even the empress’s gifts of thick wool cloaks, hats, mittens, boots, and scarves were incapable of withstanding the biting winds. His fingers kept going numb, and he had to make fists to keep the blood flowing.

  This must be the coldest winter the world has ever seen. If the water in my eyes freezes, will I be unable to blink?

  Mince stood with a bucket in hand and stomped on the river with his frozen feet-solid as stone. He heard no cracking, nor the gurgle of liquid lapping beneath the surface. There would be no water again, which meant another miserable day warming cups of snow under their tunics. Hadrian had ordered them not to build a fire and Renwick was adamant about obeying. The task was unpleasant, but they could make do. Mince was not sure how much longer the horses could go without.

  Lack of water was not the horses’ only problem. Even though the boys had tethered them in a tight pack, and built a windbreak from pine boughs and thickets, the animals were still suffering from the cold. Ice formed on their backs, icicles hung from their noses, and that morning Mince had seen two of them lying down. One was producing a small puff of white mist at frighteningly long intervals. The other did not appear to breathe at all. The ones lying down were the horses on the outside of the pack-t
he ones exposed to the most wind.

  The Big Freeze, as Kine had named it, had occurred three days earlier and come upon them overnight. The previous day they had run around in warm sunshine, playing tag without scarves or hats; then the sky had turned gray and a frigid air blew in. That morning Elbright had returned from fetching the water reporting that only a narrow stream ran down the center of the river. The day after, the river was gone completely-replaced by a smooth expanse of white. That afternoon when the snow started to fall, the flakes were no larger than grains of sand.

  The five boys had been living in a snow cave beneath the eaves of a holly tree, and when the freeze came, they dug their shelter deeper and built a windbreak by covering the opening with lashed pine boughs.

  Time passed slowly after the Big Freeze. With the temperature so bitter, they no longer went out except to relieve themselves. The only fun they had had was when Brand discovered the trick. He got up miserable, shivering, and cursing, and in a fit of frustration, he spit. It was so cold that the liquid cracked in the air. They spent the next few hours trying to see who could get the loudest snap. Kine was the best, but he had always been the best spitter. As fun as cracking spit was, it pushed away the boredom only temporarily and they tired of the game. As the cold wind blew, and the temperature continued to drop, Mince could not help wondering how long they would have to stay.

  He should have headed back to the Hovel, what they began calling their snow cave, but instead scanned the length of the broad white trail that ran north and south like a shining crystal road. Mince was trying to see if some portion was clear. Perhaps there was a place where the current prevented the ice from forming. He looked for a change in color, but there was nothing but a never-ending expanse of white. Still, something caught his eye. Far to the north he saw movement.

  A long gray line crossed the river. There were people, tall and slender, wearing identical cloaks. He stared, amazed at the sight, and wondered if perhaps they were ghosts, for in the stillness of the winter’s morning he heard no sound of their passing. Mince stood staring but it was not until he saw a glint of armor that it occurred to him what he was actually seeing. The revelation froze him as instantly as if he were spit turning solid in the morning air.