by E. S. Bell
Some of the coolness in Byric’s expression melted. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Perhaps. But might I have a look at your treasure first, lady?”
Julian whipped his head around while Niven made a gurgling sound and blushed up to his ears. Selena’s own cold rebuke was on her lips while Byric glanced at each, confused.
“Your Paladin’s sword,” he said, indicating the blade on Selena’s hip. “I have never seen one with my own eyes.”
There was a moment of silence and then Captain Tunney burst out with laughter that rang in the small cavern. He slapped Byric on the shoulder.
“Oi, mate. Ye stay too long in this hole. Ye know not how to speak to guests, especially them o’ the female persuasion.” He wiped tears or mirth from his eyes and slumped into a chair against one wall of books. “I’m going to rest me nerves for the trek out o’ this tomb,” he said, still chuckling as he settled his cap over his eyes. “Wake me when yer done sharin’ yer treasures.”
Byric’s cold expression vanished altogether and he stammered, hands flapping.
“Oh, godsdamn my mouth, I meant no offense, lady. Tunney is right. I have been too long outside the company of people. Please accept my apologies.”
“No need to apologize,” Selena said, unsheathing her sword. “A simple misunderstanding.” She held the weapon by the hilt, its blade resting on her other palm, and offered it to Byric.
The big man took it reverently. He inspected its lines and edges, and tested its balance on one hand. “Such fine steel. And the sapphire…” He held the sword near the flame of a candle on the long table before them. The sapphire in the pommel caught the light and refracted a smattering of blue stars across the table. “Perfectly cut. I have heard the gem is what makes the Paladin’s sword distinct.”
“The sword is given at the beginning of our training. Plain, sturdy steel. The sapphire is added after we pass the final tests.”
Byric nodded absently, examining the blade a moment longer before returning it to Selena. “Thank you. I have not seen an Aluren Paladin since leaving Isle Parish many years ago.”
“You haven’t a Nanokari accent,” Selena remarked. “What brought you here from the big islands?”
“What drives a man to trade one of the richest islands on Lunos for this cold, snowy desert, you mean? Knowledge. Or, more accurately, the preservation of knowledge.”
The dramatic tint to his words told Selena the man did indeed love to talk, and she guessed he’d be willing to tell her anything she wished about Accora. Eventually.
“I was a Guildsman in my youth,” he continued. “Order of Archivists. I wished to spend my days in the Parish library, sorting and ordering, but my Guildmaster needed men on the sea, in acquisitions. I spent many a dreary year sailing about Lunos, searching for artifacts to preserve at the Guild.
“One winter, some forty years gone now, a great storm crashed our ship against Nanokar’s ice.” His eyes grew heavy for a moment with memories and he rocked back and forth on his heels. “Most of …well, most of the crew and fellow Guildsman were lost to the Deeps is what happened.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Selena said.
“Only three crew survived and I was taken gravely ill,” Byric said after clearing his throat. “It was some many turns of the moon before I was able to send a peliteryx to the Guild to make them aware of the lost barge and our men. There are not many birds here, as you can imagine. While I recuperated and waited for orders from the Guildmaster, the Nanokari revealed that they had their own small trove of artifacts. Come. Let us walk about and I’ll show them to you.”
Selena inspected a intricately woven grass tapestry, painted in wild garish colors, now faded.
“That is a kneeling mat from the Islands of the Painted Kings,” he told her. “Dates from the Age of Sedition, before abolition. The Kings wove these beautiful mats for kneeling before their altars to the Two-Faced God. During War of Sedition they burned them in front of slavers. The idea being that they knelt to no man. Heavily symbolic, are the traditions of the Painted Kings.” He admired the mat as if he hadn’t been in its presence for the last forty years, and then continued their tour.
“The Nanokari stowed all their treasures—some valuable and historic, most not—in a cask house. They had no idea what to do with it all, or if they should sell them or burn them. When I was well enough, they brought me to the Dragon’s Breath Canyon and showed me the door under what I call the Royal Dragon. You saw it? The broken dragon with the haughty expression?”
“We did.”
“They brought me to this cavern under the Royal, and it occurred to me that Isle Nanokar was rich in its own history and that it should preserve the treasures that washed upon its shores, so to speak.”
“So you are responsible for this great archive?” Selena said. “A noble endeavor, Guildsman Byric.”
The big man’s pleasure was evident though he hid his smile in his beard. “Yes, well, the Guild agreed that it was a worthy endeavor, if not noble. Mostly because the idea of transporting so many valuable artifacts past Uago’s pirates wasn’t a voyage they wished to undertake.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I never was much of a people person and sailing makes me ill. Turns out I have the nerve to live with the weight of the mountain over my head, too. It’s comforting, in a way.”
“Who carved those great dragons that make up the canyon?” Niven asked.
“I don’t know, young sir,” Byric said, “and neither do the Nanokari. The beasts were here before the first settlers to Nanokar arrived, hundreds of years ago.”
“The Guild must’ve made them,” Julian said, examining the small jar of green liquid that contained the preserved remains of some ocean creature. “Only the Guild would have the gear and the engineers to create carvings so high and so large.”
Byric took the jar from Julian’s hands and held it up so that they could better examine it. “Do you know what this is, Captain Tergus?”
Julian shrugged. “A sea horse?”
Byric’s dark eyes were alit with excitement. “It would appear so, but no. It is a merkind in its infant state.” He turned the jar to provide a better view. “One wouldn’t guess they’d be so small, eh? But you were right to think it a sea horse. This particular mermaid would have grown up to have a curved tail and lateral fins, as the sea horses do. Of course, we can only speculate as to her adult appearance, as merkind of the sea horse variety have rarely been witnessed near the surface due to their inability to navigate turbulent waters with speed or stability.”
Julian met Selena’s eye with raised eyebrows. She hid a smile in her hand.
“Fascinating,” Julian said.
“Truly,” Byric agreed.
The librarian set the jar back down. They had come full circle in the cavern and the Guildsman indicated Selena and Niven should sit at the long wooden table while Julian was given a silent nod of permission to continue wandering the library, inspecting its artifacts unsupervised. Tunney snored in the corner.
“You were telling us about the dragon sculptures,” Selena said after Byric had settled his bulk on the bench. She sat across from Byric. Niven sat beside him, while Julian admired a curved scimitar that rested on bolts hammered into the stone behind them.
“Ah yes. I was saying I’m quite certain they were not built by the Guild. Being a Guildsman myself, and an Archivist, I would have known if such an endeavor had ever been undertaken. Only the Order of Engineers would be capable of such a feat and there was no record of the Order ever having done so. And no Guildmaster, of ages past or now, would waste manpower for something that served no practical purpose. No, this canyon and the cavern we’re standing in were created before the Breaking.”
Selena’s eyes widened and Niven glanced around their surroundings with newfound awe.
“There’s nothing left from the Breaking.” Julian ran his finger along the unsharpened edge of the sword. “It was all destroyed by dragons.” His lips curled in a dry smile. “Big ones…or so I�
�ve heard.”
Selena shushed him. She leaned over the table toward Byric. “How do you know?”
“Because when the Nanokari showed me this cavern, it was occupied. By corpses. Very well-preserved corpses, sheltered as they were from the elements. Two men and one woman with ancient garments that fell apart at my touch. They didn’t wear the blue and silver—nor the colors of those devoted to other gods. Whatever texts or scrolls they may have possessed had long since turned to dust, much to my deepest regret. Nevertheless, I had the sense that those three were pilgrims, that this place was holy to them. I still do.”
He took up a jar of amber-colored liquid so that the candlelight caught it to reveal a mosquito the length of a man’s hand caught within.
“I believe their people worshipped the dragons. They were ignorant of the danger those beasts were about to wreak on the land, and so built this monument to them. With what tools, I can’t possibly guess. The Nanokari hadn’t known what to make of them, or the cavern, or the canyon in general, and so had left it all to me. I had the dead buried at sea and cleaned out the chamber here.”
“And you’ve been here ever since,” Selena said.
“I have. Most Nanokari, like Tunney over there, think me mad for preferring to live here. Mayhap you do too—”
“No, of course not,” Selena said at the same time Julian muttered, “It had crossed my mind.” She twisted in her seat to glare at him but Byric chuckled.
“No offense is taken, I assure you,” he said. “I’m not lonely, nor am I starved for companionship. The past….it speaks to me. These books and artifacts tell me their stories and I never get tired of listening. Of course, I enjoy visitors and speaking about this place, as I’m sure you’ve noted.” He smiled briefly.
“When Accora came to live on Nanokar for those two years, I had all the conversation I could handle. And I wasn’t sorry for it. She was welcome here, and I missed her when she was gone, torn book or no.” He regarded Selena somewhat apprehensively. “She was Bazira, you’re Aluren. There is trouble in there somewhere, yes?”
Selena fought for something to say that wouldn’t close him off to her. Just before her silence would have been suspicious, Julian slid onto the bench beside Selena, the light half of his painted face closest to her.
“There have been some disturbances with the merkind in the northern waters, and it is rumored she resides near here. She is wanted for questioning and that is all.”
“Aye.” Byric seemed relieved. “I’m not one to meddle in official Temple business. Besides, this was twenty years ago. She’d be an old woman by now.” He gave a small smile. “Old, like me. Nothing I can say is like to be important to your current affairs, I’m sure.”
Selena shot Julian a grateful look. “Anything you can tell us is helpful,” she said to Byric. “Tell us about the book she tore.”
The librarian hefted himself off the bench and went to one of the natural shelves along one wall. He returned with a heavy book with gilt edges. An old ribbon with a forked end stuck out from a section near the end, like a snake’s tongue. Byric opened the book at the ribbon and turned it so that Selena could see.
Tiny, elegant script written in Tradespeak formed neat columns on the page. The script framed a gorgeous image drawn with multi-colored ink that was flecked with gold and still luminous despite the book’s age. The picture was of a man kneeling prostrate before a full moon in a starlit sky. Selena smiled, for it was clear the man was an Aluren adherent. The style of his overtunic was different than hers but was the same deep blue color and edged in silver.
“This chapter details the Advent of the gods,” Byric said. “The holiest of chapters, as it describes the terror of the dragons, the turmoil of the Breaking, and how the gods brought peace to Lunos where there had been so much strife and destruction. And look here.” He pointed to where tufts of paper stuck up from the crease of the book. “Shameful.”
“What did she take?” Niven asked.
“A page that was already marred, truth be told. When this book came to my library from a merchant many long years ago, it was already flawed. A person of Ho Sun descent had scrawled some words in his language on the missing page.”
“Did Accora know what the Ho Sun writing meant?” Selena asked.
Byric shook his great shaggy head. “Nay. But she was bent on finding out. I suppose that’s why she tore the page, even after I offered to copy it for her. She had theories that she was serious about proving.”
“Theories?”
“About the Advent, the gods, dragons, the whole lot of it. Much of our history didn’t sit right with her.”
Niven sniffed. “That’s not surprising. She is Bazira, after all. It would be like the Bazira to scoff at Aluren history.”
“It wasn’t Aluren history she questioned, young sir, but her own faith too. The Shadow as well as the Shining face of the god.”
“She was an apostate?” Selena asked.
Byric scrubbed windpaint out of his beard. “Not by my reckoning. She never did come out and say she eschewed the Two-Faced God but she sure did like talking about other…possibilities.” He sighed with longing. “And I did so enjoy the talks, even if I didn’t see things the same way she did. I do believe she appreciated me as well, as she could knock her ideas off me to see how they sounded.”
“Tell me more about her theories,” Selena said. “Why was she so interested in the Advent?”
“I don’t know for certain what set her on that course. Her being Bazira and all, I would have thought she’d be full of regard for the Shadow face.”
“Captain Tunney said she came here to proselytize but soon lost the heart for it.”
“Aye, mayhap she was sent by her people to make converts. But she must have known she wasn’t going to have any luck turning those who could never be turned. Respect for both faces of the god is as ingrained in the Nanokari tradition as long and deep as this here cavern and she knew it. She landed on Nanokar with only half a mind to her task. Her real love was this library. She knew of it too, and before the ship that brought her was out of dock, she was in here, searching and talking and asking questions I hadn’t the answers to.”
Selena bit her lip, tasting windpaint, and exchanged glances with Niven. “If she had doubts about her faith twenty years ago, how far from the Shadow face might she be now?”
“Remember it wasn’t just her own faith she doubted,” Byric said. “She questioned the whole Advent and the history just after the Breaking, where the order of events is mucked up and obscured. Here.” He rose and went to a shelf along the wall where Captain Tunney sat in a chair, snoring under his hat. The librarian pulled out a book, a thinner tome than the illuminated manuscript
“Now, this book is much older than most any here, so my pardons, but I’ll handle it myself.”
“Of course,” Selena said.
Byric handled the book as though it were a baby bird; its pages were brittle and cracked with age.
“This is a collection of fairy and folktales. It was compiled during the Age of Legends, but the stories themselves were likely written at the time of the Breaking.” He found the story he was looking for. “A tale of a girl who was grievously betrayed by her brother and who took her own life out of sorrow for the treachery. The storyteller writes that this betrayal hearkens back to something called the First Betrayal wherein—” Byric read from the text—”the majestic protectors were foully betrayed by their monstrous kin before they ascended to a holy plane.’”
“The First Betrayal?” Selena asked. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Byric said. “And neither did Accora, though she was most taken with that phrase. That, and the bit about ‘majestic protectors’ and a ‘holy plane.’”
“Why was she interested in that particular story?”
“It was an additional piece of evidence, so to speak, for the notions that were brewing in her mind. Like I said, she arrived on Isle Nanokar with questions.”
“What kind of questions?” Julian asked.
“Well, for instance, there were four gods that came to Lunos in the Advent.” He ticked them off with his fingers: “Shaizan of the Ho Sun people; Wor’ri of the druids down in the Emerald Isles; Oshkat, the war god of the Zak’reth; and our Two-Faced God who rules the rest.
“Now, Shaizan and Oshkat are considered male, whilst Wor’ri is called a ‘she’ by her devoted. But the Two-Faced God? It has no gender. It doesn’t even have a name. Certainly, we have names for each half of its face: Bazira and Aluren. But it doesn’t bear its own, nor do we ascribe to it a male or female persona. Accora wanted to know why not.”
“Why, the answer is common knowledge, at least among the Aluren,” Niven said. “It’s because the god has no such distinction. It exists in an elevated state where human concepts such as male and female have no bearing. It is more than human. We can’t begin to classify it with our base terms, nor should we.”
“Aye, and that’s what I learned in my youth as well,” Byric told Niven, “though I’ve never heard it spoken of as eloquently as you have, young sir.”
“But Accora didn’t buy it?” Julian asked.
“She did not,” Byric agreed. “She believed that answer was too simple and too—pardons, Master Niven, her words not mine—willfully ignorant of the obvious.”
“And what was so obvious to her?” Selena asked.
“That the gods were the ‘majestic protectors’ named in the story; humans who ‘ascended to a holy plane.’” He shifted his bulk in his seat. “Further, that these humans had names: Oshkat, Shaizan, Wor’ri, Aluren and Bazira.”
“Blasphemous tripe!” Niven cried, causing Tunney—in the corner—to snort in his sleep and smack his lips before settling again. “I am affronted to hear my god—or even the lesser gods— spoken of in such a base manner.”
“Aye, it made me nervous,” Byric said. “I almost expected the tides to come pouring in to drown us both, but Accora had no such qualms. She was as sharp of tongue as she was sharp of mind. She spent most of her time here trying to discover if her theory was correct. But alas, this library is not so large. There are no other tales or histories that date so close to the Breaking as to be useful to her. I’m surprised that she hadn’t turned up in the library in the Guild’s academy, and that you seek her out in these parts after so long.”
