by Tom Lloyd
‘Feel free, it makes me seem loveable.’ He smiled and stepped to one side so she could join him at the entrance to the reading room. ‘Well, here we are, face to face with the horror of your untidiness.’
She looked inside. The room was as she’d left it, a small packing crate of books still on the floor under the desk and perhaps two dozen on the shelves on either side, with a handful more scattered over the table top.
Gennay took a tentative step forward before a surge of exasperation washed away the last of her fears. She marched in, Emin following close behind, and started to collect the books from the table.
‘I don’t know who keeps leaving them like this. It must be the foreman, or one of the workmen looking at the illustrations.’
Emin rounded the table, nudging one book so he could inspect the gilt lettering on the spine before reaching the far end where another had been left open. He inspected the page and turned it over to look at the leather cover.
‘Then your workmen have strange tastes,’ he announced, holding it up for Gennay to see. ‘This is one of Father’s – well, the copy he had made for the library.’
‘Not so strange really. That page it’s at, the plate’s very striking. Most likely they were just leafing through and lingered on an image they liked.’
‘Aryn Bwr’s return to Keriabral?’ Emin looked doubtful for a while as he inspected the page. ‘Seems an odd one to linger on. If memory serves there are several of Zhia and Araia Vukotic that a labourer might find more interesting.’
Gennay raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh really? And might those be the ones where the artist is said to have used local prostitutes as the models for the heretics? Honestly, Emin.’
He flicked past a dozen pages until alighting on one illustration. ‘Ah, Zhia, my first love!’
‘Don’t be so disgusting!’
‘Hah, well none of your friends could ever match up to her,’ he said and raised the picture for Gennay to see. She looked away with a snort which only added to the young man’s glee. ‘Brilliant and beautiful – monster or not, I’d like to meet her before I died.’ Emin laughed. ‘At least – a decent length of time before I die, not just a few moments! Araia I just feel sorry for.’
‘Sorry for her? She’s a heretic, cursed to be an immortal vampire for her crimes against the Gods! How can you feel sorry for that?’
Emin returned the book to its original page, his face serious once more. ‘A heretic yes, but not one whose share of the blame should have been equal. The five Vukotic children all received the same punishment for their crimes, but Araia and Feneyaz merely followed their brilliant siblings. They were the most remarkable family ever to have lived; the two lesser children would have had little option but to follow where the others led.’
‘They still had a choice!’ Gennay protested, her irritation as much with Emin perusing the pages while talking as much as what he was saying.
‘Perhaps, but how much of one we’ll never know. The pressure to follow their family and the orders of their king must have been immense.’
He hesitated and picked the book up to bring it closer. Gennay saw Emin’s lips move slightly as he re-read some words, then looked up at her.
‘Who copied these?’
‘This one? It must have been the monks out at Dastern Monastery, they did all the copying of Father’s religious works.’ She frowned at his expression, aware Emin was rarely so intent and serious on any subject. ‘Why, what’s wrong?’
He didn’t speak for a while but stared at the wall, obviously trawling his memory. At last he did speak, but when he did Emin sounded uncharacteristically hesitant. ‘I may be mistaken; it’s been a while since I read this …’
‘Emin what is it?’ Gennay demanded. ‘Stop being cagey, I’ve never once seen you incorrectly recall anything you were interested in so tell me what’s wrong.’
He nodded, still looking distant. ‘Aryn Bwr’s return to Keriabral – the page this was left opened at. “As the ghost hour began, the great heretic returned to his fortress of Keriabral to find it fallen to siege. What once were mortal men now feasted upon the dead and desecrated the gardens of his beautiful fastness; the children of Larat and Veren suckled upon the marrow of his queen’s bones.”
‘Those lines aren’t in the original, I’m sure of it. The breaking of Keriabral was a celebrated victory – a heroic sacrifice by the Yeetatchen who knew Aryn Bwr would soon return and they needed to destroy his greatest castle before he wiped them out.’
Gennay took the book from him. ‘And this isn’t in Father’s copy?’
‘I’m certain of it, the lines have been inserted – but what monk would do so? The implications are, well, significant to the reader’s impression, especially considering the crimes committed by Aryn Bwr’s forces during the war.’
As Emin spoke, Gennay scanned the page and then turned to the next, looking those lines over as she did. She frowned and turned back, then switched between the two quickly.
‘This page has more lines, the script is cramped. It looks like a new page with the adapted text inserted into the book.’
Emin began to look around the room rather more carefully than he had before, inspecting each shelf individually and even the table itself. ‘Strange it was this book open at this page, when Sarras took such fright he ran out into the street and under a carriage. More than strange, that’s a coincidence I don’t care for.’
‘What are you looking for?’
He bent to look at the underside and legs of the table. ‘I don’t know,’ Emin said eventually, not appearing to have found anything of interest. ‘Perhaps this is simply some monk angry at the Gods and inserting heresy into this text by way of revenge.’
‘But you don’t believe it.’
Gennay closed the book and tucked it under her arm, clearly intending to inspect it further and see if there were any other passages she would need to have removed.
‘So what then? Some daemon creeping its way out of the Dark Place to irritate me? Frankly, they’d do a better job by rearranging my index system.’
As though defeated, Emin slumped down into one of the reading room’s chairs. He looked puzzled and perturbed and, for perhaps the first time in her life, Gennay saw him properly confused about what was happening around him, but instead of cheering her up the sight just rekindled her own buried anxiety.
The worry of the past week caught up with her again and seemed to add gloom to the already dim room. Under the weight of it her limbs felt sluggish and weak; she joined Emin in sitting and the pair remained silent for a long while.
‘If this was the work of some bitter monk, he’s a petty man even by the standards of his profession,’ Emin announced at last, ‘and it still doesn’t account for Sarras. If it was a complete coincidence, the two circumstances meeting like this, it means we know nearly nothing about either – yet if they are linked somehow, the link entirely eludes me.’
‘Sarras saw,’ Gennay said quietly, ‘or thought he saw, a ghost. No, don’t look at me like that, I’ve not gone mad. This past week has seen more than a few strange happenings, I’ve felt a presence on several occasions and heard what I’ve put down to rats more than once. Though he denies it, I’m sure Bewen has experienced something out of the ordinary—’
‘Bewen experiences life through a bottle of whatever he can get his hands on,’ Emin interrupted. ‘He’s hardly a reliable witness.’
‘And how about me? Do I meet your standards of reliability or do you think me just some foolish, over-excitable girl?’
Emin bristled at the accusation. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth. Have I ever treated you that way? Ghosts are rare in the Land, far more so than most people believe, but rats are rather more common. Anyone working here late will hear strange noises, man or woman, so a drunk’s confirmation is no confirmation at all.’
‘What about a man so frightened he bolted from the building with no thought to his own safety, nor mine?’
Emin had no answ
er for that and his frown only deepened. He looked his sister up and down, then reached into his tunic and pulled a silver chain from underneath it. ‘Here, take this.’
Gennay did so. The chain was nothing remarkable, strong and simple, but from it hung two very different charms. The first she recognised; a finely-worked charm with Death’s bee symbol in the centre, made for a finer chain than the one Emin wore it on. The second was made of iron and simpler, consisting of three long horse-shoe nails bound together with wire, their points curled back on themselves to form hoops at the end.
‘What’s this second?’
‘A witch’s charm, for warding off malign spirits.’
She put it down. ‘Are you mocking me?’
‘Not at all,’ Emin insisted, his face serious. ‘If there’s any mocking to be done, it would be of me. This is what I’ve worn whenever I’ve been following the drummer boys, trying to see spirits flee their path. Ghosts should fear Death’s symbol and anything bolder should hesitate before a witch’s blessing.’
‘You expect me to wear it?’
He shrugged, the hint of a smile returning to his face. ‘I expect you to be sensible. We don’t know what’s happened here, but it doesn’t hurt to take precautions in case it is something supernatural. At the moment all I can think of is to rule out possibilities. If a ghost or spirit is on the table, so to speak, these charms should either ward it off or tell us answers lie elsewhere.’
‘Why don’t we have the library exorcised while we’re about it?’ Gennay said sharply.
Emin’s smile widened. ‘Exactly my thoughts – it can’t hurt now, can it?’
To Gennay’s astonishment her brother was true to his word. When they returned to the library in the grainy morning light, a tall, black-robed priest of Death was waiting for them at the courtyard gate. He cut an ominous figure, motionless with his hood up and not a scrap of flesh exposed to the pale sun. Against the clean new stone of the wall he echoed his forbidding God even more than usual.
‘Unmen Karanei,’ Emin said, greeting the man warmly after he bowed to kiss the large oval ring bearing Death’s rune the unmen proffered.
Gennay did the same and received a nod in response, but it was to Emin that the priest finally spoke. ‘Master Thonal, a pleasure as always.’
As Emin led them into the courtyard, the priest slipped his hood back and revealed a face quite incongruous with his soft, educated voice. Gennay suspected he wasn’t a Penitent of Death by the man’s robe – most penitents raised to the level of unmen retained a sign of their impious past – but Karanei had a soldier’s face.
His grey-shot hair was trimmed and neat and his cheeks freshly shaven, so there was no disguising the two parallel scars that ran up from jaw to crown up the left side of his head. One cut crossed his ear and left a neat diagonal line on it, the other had sliced off the very top corner – Gennay had seen similar injuries before but never so neatly side-by-side.
‘Karanei is an unusual sort of priest,’ Emin explained, seeing Gennay’s surprise. ‘We’re fortunate he is in the city, he really is the very best at what he does.’
‘What he does?’ she echoed, the fatigue of the last few days meaning she took a moment to understand. ‘You’re a daemon-hunter?’
‘It certainly wasn’t a bear that did this to me,’ Karanei said sternly, indicating his scars.
Despite Emin’s obvious amusement at the scene, Karanei looked impassive, either bored with continually explaining himself or just uncaring of what Gennay thought.
‘Is that even sanctioned by the cult these days? Emin, this is ridiculous. If news of this gets out the library could be ruined by gossip before it’s even opened!’
‘You suspect there’s a ghost or malign spirit in the building?’ Karanei demanded. ‘Yes? Well, then you want an exorcism. How do you think that’s done? An ordained priest bears Death’s touch and can pray and conduct rituals which may drive off whatever’s there, but may do nothing whatsoever.
‘If you want to be sure, find someone with a spark of magic – that way they know what they’re dealing with, can add some force if necessary, and discover whether they were successful. There’s always the possibility that you just piss the spirit off and it tries to claw your head off, so maybe being able to handle a more physical confrontation would be a good idea too.’
‘And what are we paying you for these intangible services?’ Gennay demanded, refusing to be cowed by some unsmiling renegade priest.
‘You think I’m a fraud? Hah, you’re more like your brother than I first thought.’ At last Unmen Karanei did smile, but it was grudgingly done and fleeting. ‘I’m here as a favour to Master Emin – this cocksure little sod sticks his nose in more than he should, but he’s helped me in the past. As for being sanctioned by the cults, of course I am – stipended too, so don’t you worry about me demanding payment off anyone.’
He continued on to the main door and thumped on it for the night watchman, Bewen, to admit them. Gennay gave her brother a look but he pointedly ignored her as he sauntered past, his usual infuriating smile on his lips, and she found she didn’t have the energy to upbraid him further. When Bewen pulled the heavy door open he gave a start at the sight of Karanei, but managed to compose himself well enough to bow as the priest of Death swept past.
Gennay watched the man do a quick scout of the great hall, assessing every room and exit in a glance, before reaching into his voluminous sleeve to fetch something from underneath. It was left to Emin to offer Bewen a half-explanation and relieve the man of the keys, firmly ushering the bemused watchman out and shutting the door on him.
‘There, we’re alone now. The other scribes won’t be in today, I sent them all a message last night.’
‘Good, scribes tend to be an excitable lot. The last thing I need right now is a load of them shrieking like eunuchs.’
Karanei extracted a slim bag from his robe and produced a misshapen stick of chalk from it. He went to the furthest door, which led to the north wing, and drew a large rune with swift, confident strokes, muttering under his breath as he did so. Out from this he drew four lines of script, more angular marks that looked like unfinished runes until he went back over them and overlaid them with a strange curving script.
‘A charm of protection,’ Emin explained as Karanei went to do the same on the door behind them that led to the guildsmen offices, ‘activated by magic imbued into the chalk.’
‘Indeed,’ Karanei commented, ‘and merely a precaution, Mistress Thonal – I take my personal safety rather more seriously these days. Emin, do you remember your studies well enough to do the windows?’
Without waiting for an answer the priest reached into his bag again and tossed Emin a second shard of chalk. The young man did as he was told, pausing only for a moment when Karanei went to inspect his work.
‘Godless wretch,’ the priest muttered sourly at what Emin had drawn on the windowsill, a simpler symbol than Karanei’s but still nothing Gennay recognised.
Whatever Emin had done, Karanei’s expression soured but he made no effort to erase the image, only touching a finger to the runes and moving on to the next. Before long the room was finished and he produced a small lumpy candle which he proceeded to rub the wick of like a firestick until it sputtered alight. He set the candle on the floor and sat before it, palms angled towards its flame as though he was warming his hands.
Emin beckoned to Gennay and led her to the stairs, heading up until they were standing beside her desk and only able to see Karanei’s head over the balustrade.
‘He’s going to be a while,’ Emin whispered, perching on the corner of her desk. ‘Rather than do some general exorcism he’ll give the energies in the building a gentle nudge, see what’s here and whether there’s any point.’
‘And if there is?’
‘He’ll slap it down pretty hard most likely – don’t worry, it won’t even notice us in the meantime.’
‘I thought ghosts only came out at night?’
Emin shook his head. ‘No; well, yes I suppose, but they’re always there – it’s just under dark they’ve got more power and people are more likely to be afraid at night, which makes them more susceptible.’
‘So any ghost would be sleeping now?’
‘Something like that.’ Emin fell silent and returned his attention to Karanei.
It was clear he didn’t want to talk any longer so Gennay busied herself with the index cards she had abandoned the previous evening, too tired to face the school’s accounts just yet. No more than ten minutes later, the priest called up to them and made Gennay jump with surprise.
‘Emin, is this one of your jokes?’
The young man hopped up and went to the balustrade. ‘Jokes? What are you talking about?’
‘That twisted sense of humour you believe you’re famed for,’ Karanei said with a note of irritation. ‘If so, I don’t get the joke and nor do I appreciate it.’
Emin glanced back at Gennay, then shook his head. ‘No joke, I give you my word. Why? What have you found?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ Karanei eased himself upright, his face a picture of puzzlement. ‘This is an old building and a man died in the street outside, but there’s nothing here. No breath, echo, whisper or scent on the breeze.
‘The building isn’t just empty, it’s been scoured clean. I’ve only ever seen this after an exorcism; the Library of Seasons itself is no more dead than this place.’
At Emin’s request, Karanei performed an exorcism anyway, keeping his muttered complaints to a muted minimum. Emin had seen how Gennay had taken the priest’s verdict and it worried him. Instead of being comforted by the reported lack of ghosts her shoulders had fallen and her attention pushed elsewhere. They had sat in silence until Karanei finished, Gennay shrugging off Emin’s efforts at conversation and staring off towards nothing much.
Even once the priest had left she was not forthcoming, something that worried him further. Gennay made a show of busying herself with the many matters of the school that required her attention, but Emin could see that neither he, nor the project she was so devoted to, occupied her thoughts.
