“The book!” Sharhava exclaimed, her voice trembling with emotion. “Give it to me, girl!”
Tildi closed her arms more tightly around the scroll. The voices coming from it whispered, almost drowning out all other noises. The room was cramped now, filled with enormous humans in blue and white, all looking down upon her with avid, hungry faces. She felt overwhelmed. Every word had the force of a stone thrown at her.
“Give me the book!” Sharhava had commanded, her voice rising to shrill tones.
Rin immediately leaped between the abbess and the smallfolk girl.
“Leave her be,” the centaur said, flaring her nostrils.
Impatient of every wasted moment, Sharhava attempted to outmaneuver the centaur, but Rin had twice as many feet to put in her way. Sharhava glared over the striped back at Tildi. “Give it to me! Now! You have no right to touch it. It is sacred to nature!”
“It’s an abomination,” Rin said, calmly matching her movements until the abbess was red-faced with fury. “If that is the thing that you believe gives your kind sway over mine.”
“That’s not its purpose at all,” Serafina said, trying to defuse the rising feelings. “Rin, the Great Book is an invention of the same people who formed the centaurs. It is but another tool of their devising. No one owns you but yourselves.”
“As long as she understands it is no certificate of ownership,” Rin snorted. “You may outnumber us, but that gives you no right to make demands.”
The abbess looked from one to another as if amazed at their protests. “My order has sought this tome for thousands of years. You cannot expect us to wait a heartbeat more when it is before us!”
The Rabantavian soldiers flanked the centaur. Captain Teryn laid her hand upon her sword hilt, though she did not draw it. Morag held his polearm firmly in both hands.
“It was our mission to secure this book,” Teryn said. “My orders are to escort it and these honorables to the proper place for its bestowal.”
“Our sacred duty overtakes your mission!” Sharhava shrieked. She held up a hand. “Knights! To me!” The Scholardom became a wall of blue and white, surrounding Tildi. She bent over the book, as if to protect it from the sight.
“We have done battle,” Rin said, snatching her whip from her saddlebag, to which she had just restored it. She wound it around and around her arm. The tassled end was still shiny with blood. “I still have fight in me. Have you enough strength left to withstand me?”
Sharhava let out a trill of laughter. “So few against so many of us?” she asked.
“I would test the mettle of a Windmane princess against a thousand of your kind!”
“And she doesn’t stand alone,” Lakanta said, ducking under Rin’s front legs to face Sharhava, though she had to tilt her head far back to do it. Her blond braids were askew, her clothes were burned and torn, and soot stained her fair cheeks, but she bore a hefty rock in one hand. She beckoned with the other. “You’ll come through me as well.”
“Your challenge amuses me,” Sharhava said, holding her head high.
“Stop all this!” Magpie said, moving in between them. He was still somewhat unsteady on his feet. His tunic and trousers, travel-worn, were torn and burned, and his tricolored hair remained askew. The small lady with blue-green eyes started toward him to offer her support, but was urged back to her place by a brief glare from the abbess. “You would harm them after coming to their aid?”
“It was for the sake of the Great Book that we came!” Sharhava’s lieutenant Loisan exclaimed. “You cannot care for it as we can.”
“You can’t take it from Tildi,” Magpie said. “She is the chosen representative of the Council of Elders led by Master Wizard Olen.”
“Do not presume to dictate to me!”
“You cannot take the book,” Lakanta said. “You forget that Tildi is not alone.”
“You see that we outnumber you greatly,” the abbess said, unimpressed. “You may kill or disable some of us, but we are seasoned warriors, trained over the centuries for the sole purpose of protecting that book.” She pointed to the scroll in Tildi’s lap. “Give it to us. It is ours by right.”
Rin unrolled the whip at her side and tapped it speculatively in her palms. “It is only yours because you say it is yours. We say it is ours, under the authority of the council that sent us. Take it if you dare.”
Sharhava glared at the Windmane, and signed to the knights. They all drew their swords and advanced upon the company.
“Be reasonable, Lady Sharhava,” Magpie said. He sought to put a hand on her arm, but she threw it off.
“Do not touch me, you vagabond!”
The sudden movement made Magpie take a step backward. He staggered. The uniformed girl hurried to support him. Sharhava’s eyes went wide with indignation. “Lar Inbecca! Come away from him. Rejoin your companions.”
The girl started. “But, Aunt.”
Sharhava’s eyes blazed. “Are you sworn to me, or are you not? Do your vows mean nothing to you? Get in line!”
The young woman, whose pale skin and chestnut hair marked her as a close relative of the imperious abbess, shamefacedly let go of Magpie’s hand. She took her place in the ranks at the rear of the file. She was a princess, Tildi knew, but how she had come to be among the knights, she did not yet know. So much had gone on around her in the last hours. She had absorbed little but the wonder of holding the object of her search at last. It was dear to her.
“Please!” Serafina protested. Her voice sounded thin and hoarse. She pressed her way through the crowd to the center, confronting Magpie and the indignant Sharhava. “We have all been through so much. There is no need for fighting.”
“No, there is not,” the abbess said. “Our claim is clear. Our order was founded to take special care of this book once it was found. We are under no obligation to respect your so-called mission. You take more upon yourself than you should. You are too young to know a true calling.”
“Ooh,” Lakanta said. “She should not have attempted to tease that dog.”
Serafina, tired as she was, straightened until her back was as erect as a poplar tree and fixed Sharhava with a baleful look.
“You want the book?” she asked. “Then, take it.”
“No, Serafina!” Tildi protested.
Serafina pushed in between the two groups. “No! If you want it, Abbess, take it. Tildi, let her have it.”
“But . . .”
“I am your teacher now. Listen to me.”
Tildi gawked at her.
“Serafina!”
“Go on, child.” There was a smoldering fire in her eyes. Tildi didn’t understand the changes in her rune, but she did not choose to question it. “Give it to her.”
The voices protested mightily, but Tildi lifted the Great Book in her hands and held it up. She could scarcely bear to watch it being taken away. In moments, it had become as dear to her as a friend. What would Master Olen say? What would Edynn have said?
The abbess, triumphant, lunged for the big scroll.
“At last, at last!” she crowed. “Brothers and sisters, behold! All these years . . . aaaggh!” She screamed and sprang backward. The scroll fell from her hands. Tildi dove for it.
The smell of burning flesh took them all by surprise. Tildi felt the acrid scent singe her nostrils as she gathered the book back into her lap. It had unwound partway and nearly bounced out of her hands. Miraculously, she had managed to save it before it touched the ground. She rerolled the long parchment and patted it back into place on the spindle, cooing to it to soothe it from the indignity. Only then did she look up at the others.
Sharhava had dropped to her knees. She held up her shaking hands and stared at them. In an instant they had burned to blackened claws. Her eyes were filled with tears as she glared at Serafina.
“You cast a spell upon it, sorceress!”
“Of course I have not,” Serafina said. She handed her staff to Rin and knelt beside the abbess. She took Sharhava’s
left hand between hers and bathed it in a ball of cool light. “It is the book’s nature that puts it out of the reach of ordinary beings.”
Slowly, the hand returned to its ordinary color and shape. Serafina reached for the other one.
In that brief interval, Sharhava had recovered her dignity.
“Don’t touch me, sorceress!” Sharhava thrust her away. “Take her!” Two knights grasped her by the arms and dragged her upright.
“Let me go!” Serafina protested. Four knights rushed to assist the abbess to stand.
“Take the book,” the abbess ordered. A huge, burly man with a knobbly face like a rockfall stalked to Tildi and attempted to lift the scroll. He only touched the spindle with one hand, then jumped back as if a snake had bitten him.
“Black sorcery!” he exclaimed, holding his scorched and reddened hand up for the others to see. He tried again. Tildi had to admire his strength of will, though it was fruitless. He could never close his fingers around the parchment. His hand seemed to stop by itself an inch or more from its surface. The voices in her mind grew agitated every time he tried.
“You are hurting it!” Tildi protested.
“Never for the world!” the man said, but he withdrew at last. He shook his head at the abbess.
Trembling with rage and pain, Sharhava thrust her face at Serafina.
“You have put a spell on the Great Book,” Sharhava hissed, her eyes full of hatred. “You dare!”
“No, this is the book’s nature,” Serafina said, pulling free of the knights’ grasp. “It is more real than we are.”
“Then how can that child hold it?” the abbess asked, almost accusingly.
Serafina knelt beside Tildi. “Her immunity is the result of a chain of events that no one among you would ever want to duplicate. Not I or any of my order can do what she does. Only she can return the book to its place of safety.” She looked at Sharhava’s still-blackened right hand. “Let me help you, Abbess. I can heal that as well.”
“Do not touch me again!” Sharhava hissed. “I do not need aid from such as you.”
The words were delivered like a whiplash of hatred. Serafina’s face was still. “As you please. I only wish to ease your suffering. You see that the book has defenses. They extend to Tildi as well.”
“Does it protect her from swords and spears?” Sharhava asked suddenly.
“Are you threatening her?” Magpie asked, aghast. “A child?”
Sharhava stilled. A moment passed and her face changed. “Of course I do not threaten her. I merely ask for clarification as to the limits of the power she bears. All our fears that the Great Book would fall into enemy hands are groundless. But to see a mere infant in possession of the most important tome of this or any age? How can this be?”
“She is not an infant,” Serafina said. “She is a smallfolk. You see her feet?”
Tildi felt keenly embarrassed as everyone in the room looked at her feet, still bare and filthy with soot. She curled her legs up underneath the big scroll to hide them. It would have been a terrible breach of manners in the Quarters to have drawn attention to a person’s physical appearance, especially a woman’s.
The news of Tildi’s race seemed to come as a terrible shock to the knights. Sharhava’s face, too, had gone blank for a moment, and part of her rune seemed to manifest itself more strongly. She and her brethren did not like smallfolk, for whatever reason. Tildi was surprised and dismayed at the deep distaste that the knights manifested then sought to conceal. She knew, though. Her enhanced sight uncovered many secrets that she knew the owners wished to keep hidden.
“So, she is one of the toeless ones,” Sharhava said, recovering magnificently. “My studies do not show them to possess unusual magical talents, especially ones as powerful as hers!”
“Her ability comes as the result of events I would hope can never be duplicated,” Serafina explained. “She has made greater sacrifices than all . . . than most.” Her voice trembled. Tildi put out a hand to touch her knee, then drew it hastily back when her fingertips left burn marks on the girl’s gown.
“Then, she will bear the Great Book for us,” the abbess said. “It will go back to our Scriptorium. Consider, Tildi,” she said, kneeling down. “My order has sought this book for many long centuries. We would be grateful for the chance to study it. You will have a place of honor among us as the one who will make it possible to elicit the greatest good from the book. You shall have a title and quarters befitting your status.” She reached to touch Tildi’s shoulder, but withdrew the shaking black claw that was her right hand. “Help us preserve the treasure of the age!”
“It has to go to the south,” Tildi said, trying to figure out what the difference in the rune meant. She was afraid of the woman. Sharhava made her think of some of the wives of the elders in her home village of Clearbeck, who tried to run one’s life through sheer willpower, though their husbands were the ones in authority, not they. As a motherless girl, Tildi had withstood many like her over the years, but she was tired—so tired. “It is the only way to make it safe.”
“That is what your masters have told you, chi—smallfolk,” the abbess said, her blue-green eyes boring into Tildi’s. “How far is it to your destination?”
“I . . . I do not know.” Tildi looked up at Serafina for support. The wizardess held out her staff and a map appeared upon the air.
“Our destination lies a hundred miles from the north coast of Sheatovra,” Serafina said. “I may not be more specific than that.”
“Why not?” Sharhava said, beaming maternally upon them all. “We can be allies. Let us assist you, at least as far as the chapter house in Orontae. You have a long way to go. Your journey could take months.”
“Months!” Serafina exclaimed.
Sharhava was quick to pick up on her dubious mien.
“Yes, of course. You are not used to the road, are you? Winter is coming. It will be slow going, and you will need to travel in stages. We are experts at foraging and making a camp secure against beasts and intruders at night. You can be safe in our hands.”
Magpie frowned. “A moment ago you were ready to snatch the book out of their hands and leave them here. Why the sudden offer of aid?”
Sharhava turned her brilliant gaze upon him. “There is no need to mistrust me, my dear Eremilandur. You have said that there are powerful foes opposing this mission.”
“You were among those foes,” Magpie pointed out.
“But that was before we saw what powers the Great Book bestowed upon its favored ones,” Sharhava said. “How can we speak against its Word? You shall travel to the south, with us as your guardians. We should go at once.”
The young man’s green-gold eyes were alight with wariness.
“I would prefer to await Olen and the rest of the council here,” Serafina said. “I can summon him. He is watching for signs. It is too dangerous to travel openly. Nemeth spoke of voices . . .”
“Voices? What of that? He was mad; you said so yourself,” the abbess said, interrupting her impatiently. “Was the man not dismissed from your father’s service, Eremilandur? For incompetence during the war with Rabantae?”
“My father’s reasons were an excuse,” Magpie said hoarsely. Clearly he did not want to discuss what he had told Tildi. None of them looked back at the sad bundle on the floor, where Nemeth’s body sprawled underneath Morag’s discarded cloak. “Nemeth was a true seer. He said he heard voices, and I believe him.”
“We should leave here as soon as we can. You will see how unsafe it is to remain here any longer. This place is unstable.”
“How?” Magpie challenged her. “It has stood for a hundred centuries.”
Sharhava shook her head, as if he were a foolish child.
“Not with stone giants pounding upon its walls, nor a malign lightning storm striking bolts upon it,” she said, waving her good hand at the cracks in the high stone ceiling. “The monsters are dead, but the walls could collapse in upon us at any moment. The win
ds could return!”
“Now, that is a practical consideration,” Lakanta said, eyeing the stonework with the air of an expert. “But for that, we can find a nice cave or a village to shelter in for a while until Olen comes.”
“There are no villages nearby now,” Sharhava said. “We saw only destruction on our way here.”
“Nemeth’s spell,” Serafina said, looking pale. “He wiped them out. Can we return to the caverns?”
Lakanta looked shamefaced. “Well, now, I wouldn’t count upon my kin for much. You know that we dwarves like our privacy.”
“The dwarfhollows are closed to us now, are they not?” Rin asked gently.
“You know, I just can’t ask them to let a lot of humans go tramping through,” Lakanta said, her cheeks red. Tildi saw how deeply embarrassed she was not to be able to offer them the hospitality of her kin, but the words to offer comfort just wouldn’t come. It seemed all the strength in her body went to holding the book in her lap.
“What would you have us do, Tildi?” Sharhava asked, ignoring the others.
The voice seemed to come from far away, interrupting the voices. Tildi looked up at her dreamily.
“Serafina is our leader. She will decide.”
“But you are the one who carries the Great Book!”
Tildi shook her head.
“You are all weary. Let me take this burden for you,” Sharhava said persuasively. “We will go now, before sunset, away from this place. We will make for our haven. There I can gather more of my knights. The Great Book shall have a mighty escort befitting its importance! Come, now!” She stood up. “We will make ready to ride at once. I will lead you to safety.”
“Wait,” Serafina said. “Not so soon. Give me a few hours. I must try to make contact with Master Olen. I must tell him . . .”
“If we wait too long, it will be nightfall,” Sharhava said, overpowering her. “I cannot speak as to the safety of any of your party in this building overnight, let alone for an extended wait. We can be traveling toward Olen. That makes more sense, does it not? Come,” she said persuasively, putting her good arm around Serafina’s waist, “let me speak to you as I would to a daughter.”
A Forthcoming Wizard Page 2
