by Tom Lloyd
‘Looks good to me,’ Kayel commented, grinning evilly at Ruhen as he spoke. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘Nothing at all?’ Amber echoed, ignoring Kayel’s contribution. For a moment he didn’t realise what Nai was talking about. ‘Oh, of course.’
Some unknown quirk in the formation of the library exploited the fact that just as some places were high in background magic, others were starved. The Library of the Seasons was one such place; magic simply would not work there. Try as he might, Nai would find no energies to draw from the air around him.
‘I hadn’t realised it would be like this,’ he said, shivering. ‘The air’s so dry it tastes like sand on the wind. It’s like suddenly having the colour blue erased from your sight.’ Nai looked utterly bewildered; he didn’t even notice the sharp look the duchess gave him.
‘Well, get over it,’ Amber urged him, and forced himself to look away from the awe-inspiring sight. ‘There’s work to do. Kiallas, can you tell me where I’ll find Lord Styrax?’
‘I am to escort you all to the Scholars’ Palace so you may refresh yourselves.’ Kiallas said, pointing to the tall building hugging the cliff-face, seven or eight storeys high with long balconies running the length of each floor. The white-eye looked at Amber with a mixture of disdain and faint contempt.
‘I don’t need an escort,’ Amber said, trying not to let the white-eye arrogance irritate him, ‘just point me in the right direction.’
‘Visitors must be escorted at all times.’
‘Fetch an escort then,’ Amber said shortly. He pointed towards the largest of the buildings, the copper-domed one. It was called the Fearen House, where the library’s collection of grimoires and treatises on magic were housed. If Lord Styrax was anywhere he was most likely to be nosing around those. ‘We’re going that way.’
Amber set off down the steps with Nai trailing along behind. He heard a fluttering sound and another winged white-eye, of lower rank judging by his armour, scampered over. With the sense of a weight lifting, Amber left the duchess and her bodyguard behind, their voices soon fading into the wind. He felt like shaking his body out like a dog, elated to be free of the oppressive tunnel and unpleasant company. It was hard to decide which one unnerved him most: Kayel, with his malevolent demeanour, or Ruhen, with the shadows in his eyes, but the fresh air was all the sweeter for being rid of the pair of them.
‘What’s that?’ Nai asked when they reached the massive building, pointing at a dark stone monument at the base of the steps leading up to the portico. Beyond it was a crescent-shaped hump of ground twice the height of a man and more than twenty yards long.
‘The Failed Argument,’ Amber said, ‘a monument to Kebren. The curved rock is called The Dragon, it’s supposed to be the guardian spirit of the library.’
Their guard sniffed in annoyance. ‘It is not called the Failed Argument,’ he said. The white-eye was young and, though still taller than Amber, lacking any of Kiallas’s glowering presence. ‘It is the grave of an unknown Fysthrall who witnessed the death of Leitah, Goddess of Wisdom. The monument is to her memory, not to the patron God of the Fysthrall.’
‘A monument to the failure of reason over violence then,’ Nai mused. He walked around the oblong block of granite, looking for a seam in the rock and finding none. Unlike the buildings, the monument had been cut from the dark stone of Blackfang itself. Its surfaces had been smoothed and engraved with many lines of flowing script, but the dialect was too ancient for either of them to understand.
‘Is he underneath?’ Nai asked, looking at the paved ground at the base.
‘Encased within the rock,’ the Litse replied, not trying to hide his annoyance. ‘Treat it with care, this library was founded according to his writings - my ancestors were charged by him with keeping the memory of Leitah alive.’
‘Encased within the rock?’
Amber could see Nai assessing the monument, trying to work out how it had been made. He’s not like Isherin Purn, he realised, necromancy isn’t about power for this one. He’s just so inquisitive he doesn’t know when to stop!
‘It must have been done in the city then,’ Nai concluded. Without warning he reached up and hooked his fingers on the top of the monument. Their escort gave an indignant screech but Nai ignored him, pulling himself up so his head was above the level of the monument.
The white-eye pulled a javelin from his waist and raising it, ready to throw until Amber grabbed his arm.
‘Nai, get down,’ Amber ordered, The white-eye tried to twist out of his grip, but flight required him to be slender and light-boned, like a hawk, and Amber had the advantage of weight on his side. The Litse hissed in frustration and went for his dagger, at which point Amber gave him a hefty shove that sent the youth reeling backwards, wings unfurled and outstretched as he tried to regain his balance.
‘Did you recognise the unknown soldier?’ came a voice from the steps. Kastan Styrax stood there, in front of a mixed group.
Amber dropped to one knee.
‘Well? I can see there’s a face carved on the top, is it anyone you recognise?’ Amber could hear the laughter in his lord’s voice. Throughout history the Menin had never been able to resist bating the fussy, humourless Litse. For some reason it pleased Amber to realise his lord was not immune to that impulse, a rare glimpse of humanity in one normally remote and unknowable.
‘Rings a bell, my Lord,’ Nai replied cheerfully, prompting Amber to wince at the necromancer’s blithe irreverence. ‘I’m not saying I’ve got drunk with the man, but there’s something about the eyes that’s familiar.’
Their guard gave another squawk of outrage, but this time he only looked up at the steps for instruction. There was another Litse white-eye beside Lord Styrax, bigger than Kiallas, with flashes of gold on his ornate armour. He was watching the proceedings with a frown, but so far he had refrained from getting involved. Now, as he started down the steps, Lord Styrax said quietly, ‘Heel, Gesh.’
It was the first time in a while Amber had seen his lord out of armour; even a white-eye as strong as Kastan Styrax would find a full suit tiring in this valley, so he had opted instead for something more suitable for a nobleman. He wore an expensively tailored cream tunic with red braiding, and red leather cavalry boots, as strange a sight on a white-eye as the rings he wore, diamonds and rubies flashing from his scarred left hand. Behind him walked General Gaur and Kohrad. The young white-eye looked less ostentatious than his father for once in a black brigandine. From the expression on Kohrad’s face, he had more than baiting Litse on his mind as he stared with undisguised hostility at his father’s escort. Amber could tell the slim, aloof Gesh was well-aware of the scrutiny but did not deign to take note.
‘Amber, what is your strange friend’s name?’
‘My name is Nai, my Lord,’ the necromancer said before Amber could reply, bowing briefly.
‘I don’t remember speaking to you,’ Lord Styrax said. ‘Remember your place or Major Amber will cut that lopsided grin off your face.’
Nai’s smile faltered as he realised there wasn’t a trace of humour in Styrax’s words.
‘Now, Amber: talk.’
Amber bowed to the correct depth. ‘The servant of Isherin Purn, my Lord -I mentioned him in my report, but clearly I was mistaken in my assumption he had died.’ He hesitated and looked Styrax direct in the eye. ‘My Lord, he has news you should hear.’
Styrax nodded. ‘I understand.’ He glanced back up at the entrance to the Fearen House, set behind a colonnade of eight enormous pillars standing sixty feet high. The main entrance was a brass-fronted door some thirty feet high, polished to a shine at the expense of whatever image had once been imprinted onto the metal. ‘Come with me,’ he ordered.
They ascended the steps and entered, Amber checking his pace to glance at the bas-reliefs of winged warriors on each side of the door before following Lord Styrax in. The Fearen House had high windows of stained glass on each of the six walls: two thin windows alongside the ent
rances to each wing and three enormous ones on the other walls. They filled the massive central space with tinted light, adding colour to a drab day. Above the windows were drapes of richly coloured cloth, gold-edged flags of bright red punctuating long swathes of flowing blue.
The Menin weren’t the only visitors to the library. A few scholars were leaning over some of the half-dozen U-shaped desks below the dome, where lecterns on two sides were angled towards the scholar in the centre so he could study the enormous leather-bound books. Two men and a woman looked up at the sound of feet before averting their gaze quickly, at which Amber allowed himself a small smile.
The prohibition on weapons doesn’t seem as effective in the presence of a man double the weight and a foot taller than a normal man.
Lord Styrax ignored the looks and continued on into the very centre of the room. Amber looked around at the huge room; he’d not before been in a temple as large as this and it was undoubtedly as magnificent as any room he’d ever seen, even if the dome above did lack the gold ornamentation he’d expect in a Temple of Death. There was the dry scent of book dust on the air, and solid blocks of bookcases protruded out into the room on all sides. Arcane symbols were carved into every available wooden surface of the bookcases and armed guards were posted at every door.
Lord Styrax had stopped in the very centre of the room. Amber caught him up and stood at his side.
‘Do you know what that is?’ Lord Styrax said in a soft voice. The Fearen House was as quiet as a temple at prayer, its few devotees bent silently over their icons of worship.
Amber looked at the object: a five-sided column of black granite, two feet high and one foot square, with the corners smoothed down and the whole thing polished to an almost mirror shine. In the centre of its flat top was a half-sphere which, for no reason Amber could tell, appeared to be solid gold. A tiny script was etched both into stone and gold, so small Amber had to bend down before he realised it was not a language he could read. It took him a while to work out what the language was: single or grouped geometric runes cut at one depth, overlaid with a shallower, more flowing style, like scroll-work on a picture frame - Elvish, the first mortal language, made up of a hundred and twenty-one angular core runes and five hundred and five lesser, to which the flowing script added detail, case and tense.
‘It’s called the Heart of the Library,’ Lord Styrax said, anticipating the soldier’s response.
Amber straightened again. ‘Does it do anything? That’s Elvish, isn’t it?’
‘Not as far as I can tell, and of course no magic works here.’
‘Why write in Elvish then?’ He frowned. ‘I thought folk only used the language for magic, that it was the best representation for channelling energy? You don’t write secrets in it and leave them in a bloody library where there are the resources, and scholars, to translate it.’
‘The script is apparently a poem, one that is so obscure it most likely contains a code. They call it the puzzle of the heart.’
Amber looked up at his lord. Without warning the hairs on his neck prickled, as they did when he suspected he was not in control of a situation.
What sort of a conqueror gets distracted in a library, however magnificent? Karkarn’s horn, is conquest not your goal?
‘Have you broken the code?’ Amber asked in a hoarse whisper.
Lord Styrax smiled in a way he had never seen before: in genuine pleasure. The huge white-eye rarely showed his true emotions and Amber gave a cough of surprise as Styrax replied, ‘I will start today; none of my investigations have managed to procure a transcription. All I have heard is that the code is fiendishly difficult and reveals a surprising truth - the few individuals who have managed to decode it all refused to reveal the answer and destroyed their working.’
‘And you’ve come to test yourself against it?’ Amber asked. Duke Vrill had said once that had Lord Styrax not been born a white-eye or a mage, he would have become a renowned scholar all the same.
Styrax inclined his head. ‘How could I resist such a challenge? Since I could not find a transcription, I spent my time researching the object itself. I suspect the code’s creator never expected a more practical approach to the mystery.’
Amber looked puzzled. Clearly Lord Styrax had a point, but he had no idea what it was. If he wanted Amber to work something out he’d need another scrap of information.
‘I’ve been looking at their records,’ Styrax continued after a moment. ‘There is an allusion to the heart of your unknown soldier being encased within, but no explanation as to why he would donate his heart for this purpose. What’s more, according to the ancient records, Deverk Grast spent a few days here after he sacked Ismess, during what he termed the grand finale of the scouring. One night he walked out of those doors, called off the slaughter and began to draw up his plans for the Long March instead; the turning point in our tribe’s history. All very strange, wouldn’t you say?’
Amber gave a helpless shrug. ‘Ah, yes, sir, I suppose so.’
Every Menin child learned about the Long March, the exodus of the Menin tribe to the Ring of Fire. Approximately half had died on the two-year journey across the Waste but there was only ever conjecture and propaganda given as Grast’s reasoning.
Lord Styrax gave him a pat on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t have to sit here and help me with the code; just stay long enough to tell me what could not wait.’
Amber glanced back. The winged white-eye, Gesh, was watching them impassively from beside one of the bookcases, his feathers brushing its shelves. He cleared his throat, trying to speak as quietly as possible in the echoing room.
‘A few things of great importance. First of all; more people survived the fall of Scree than I had realised, Haipar the Shapeshifter for one. I was sure she’d died but now it appears she’s a nursemaid in the employ of the duchess.’
Lord Styrax gave a sharp bark of laughter. The sound echoed around the room but by the time faces looked up in surprise his face was blank again. Amber felt his cheeks colour as though he’d been the one to laugh. Despite being noble-born, he had never felt at ease in genteel surroundings.
‘Are they all this surprising?’ Styrax asked.
Amber nodded. ‘Secondly, Zhia Vukotic is in the city, or so Nai claims. Apparently she has some influence over the duchess’s chief advisor and made sure he was aware of it.’
‘Hardly a surprise; you said Haipar was one of her agents in Scree, no? It’s far from surprising the vampire has more than one in place.’
‘True, but I thought I should tell you she made the contact. The last thing is the strangest; I don’t know whether what I’ve made of it is even correct.’
Lord Styrax raised his eyebrows. ‘Your own puzzle of the heart?’
‘The duchess has a bodyguard, a new sergeant in the Ruby Guard called Kayel. He bears a basic similarity to me, nothing more, and yet it even brought me up short. For a moment I thought I had looked into the mirror, and Nai felt the same. He didn’t have time to investigate but he confirmed there was some sort of trace magic linking us.’
‘And you’ve not met him before?’ Lord Styrax mused. ‘A pretty little puzzle indeed; do you have a solution to it?’
Amber shifted uneasily. ‘Perhaps. That is-I don’t really know.’
‘Tell me.’
‘King Emin’s agent, Doranei - he came to Zhia Vukotic to ask about the prisoners she’d taken after the fight at the necromancer’s house: us. Afterwards, he kept a watch on me out of the corner of his eye, even though she’d proved it was impossible for him to have known anyone there.’
‘And so you are thinking, what if he was reminded of Kayel because of this link?’ Lord Styrax continued. ‘A good deduction. You said the Farlan knew nothing of the necromancer, nor did Narkang?’
‘Exactly, and Zhia wouldn’t have been playing those games, which leaves only Azaer’s disciples in my mind. They were the ones intent on stirring up chaos in Scree, after all, and to hear Doranei tell
it, King Emin’s been waging a silent war with the shadow for years.’
‘Azaer,’ Lord Styrax breathed, as though savouring the word. ‘That would make times interesting. You think the lovely duchess is under Azaer’s control?’
‘From what I saw, she’s not all there these days. It’s as if she’s too wrapped up in that child she’s adopted. She brought it with her today,’ he added.
‘A child?’
‘A boy, Ruhen she called him. About five winters, I’d guess. Haven’t heard the brat say a word myself, it just stands there and watches in silence.’ Amber scowled. ‘Something not right with him either,’ he added. ‘Too quiet for a child, too still.’
‘A good vehicle for exerting influence over her,’ Lord Styrax mused, ‘but to what end?’
‘Sounds like she’s tearing apart the cults in Byora; the situation looked worse than even our reports had suggested. Folk are scared in that quarter, and her troops are on the street corners, not the walls.’
Lord Styrax exhaled slowly, deep in thought. ‘It would then follow that Azaer’s intent is drive a wedge between the Gods and the masses. Perhaps it went too far in Scree and couldn’t control the storm it had created, so it’s trying again here, with a little more subtlety. My concern with that theory is that it’s a time-and disciple-consuming process, considering what you said about the minstrel dying with the city. Does this shadow really have the power to run such an operation in every city of the Land?’
‘Couldn’t it be working one by one?’ Amber asked. ‘The shadow seems to be immortal, so time isn’t against it. Why doesn’t it trot along quietly, running the operations and recruiting in parallel? Could that be the purpose of the Azaer cult they were talking about, a recruiting ground?’
‘I think you’re right there, yes. But King Emin is a mortal and running against the years,’ Lord Styrax pointed out. ‘Given the chance to tackle the same tactic from a different angle, the man would surely find a way - especially since Azaer is taking a rather prominent position in Byoran politics. Every report we’ve had from Narkang has stressed we do not underestimate King Emin’s intellect, no matter how unlucky we were sending the White Circle after him.’
