The Scholars: The Hidden Heritage II

by Derek Palmer

  It had also become a second nature to me to evaluate situations so that I was always aware where my knife was, I knew the distance to my enemy and, most importantly, I knew how to get the correct amount of spin to my throw so that the knife would hit the target correctly. From my unarmed training, I knew the correct places to hit - and the combination of these two things could be deadly. Especially if you were able to throw the knife from almost any position, quickly.

  I would like to say that Halvard/Myrddin made the decision to attack but saying that might as well be an attempt to justify my own action. As if it would really matter to anybody, regardless of who started it, I knew that I would relive the situation several times in my dreams. His hand kept on moving backwards, he kept on shifting his legs while keeping an eye on me - and my knife was flying in the air rotating in large circles hitting the man in his exposed throat.

  An important part of training to fight is that, even if you manage to get a perfect hit you must not stay there standing and admiring your perfect hit - since that's most likely the last thing you will do. I guess that it had been my inability or stupidity that had saved me when I had been fighting that creature years ago. In most fights, that kind of behavior is a certain way to get yourself killed. What if there's another enemy with a crossbow? Or what if your perfect hit is followed by even more perfect block? So, the knife was still flying when I already was rolling towards the floor and closer to Halvard. That was another important thing - if he had some sort of weapon I would have better chances against him if I could reach him.

  There would have been no need since my aiming had been perfect. The knife had torn his carotid artery and when I was standing next to him I could just see him blink his eyes a few times.

  ""I promise that I will try to save your Kara, whether she deserves that or not.""

  Even though he blinked his eyes one more time I had no idea if he had heard me or not. I tried to tell myself that I really didn't care.

  After sensing the environment and finding nothing threatening, I forced myself to calm down and take a look at the situation. It was clear that there was no going back now. In a way nothing had changed, in fact Rurik and his new patron - ex-patron - might just have made things a bit easier for me. The only problem was that I had to start a bit earlier than I had planned. On the other hand, I was quite sure that nobody would come to question me when I would be collecting the last items. Nobody had seen me enter Halvard's room with those two Magicians.

  Before leaving the room, I moved next to Halvard and took a look under the table and then I felt some knots in my stomach. I knew that there were some hand-held weapons that used gunpowder, but I had never seen one before. Here was one, bolted into the bottom of his heavy table in a way that could be turned with your legs and then triggered with your hand. But those things weren't the reason why I had felt so cold. The reason was those signs of burn under the table top hinted that the gun had been used at least a few times.

  I wondered if Halvard had spare table fronts stored somewhere since they look exactly the same and quite as old as the rest of the table. Maybe I should reconsider the promise I made to him if his granddaughter was something like him.

  I had no idea if the Magician who had come with Rurik had made some threats, or if it was only some general wariness, called common sense, that kept all the other people out of the Dark Floor for the next few hours. Even Halvard's granddaughter seemed to be busy studying, which made me happy - I didn't want to think what I would have been forced to do had she decided to visit Halvard's room. Still, I had tried to position the bodies so that it might look like only those three people had taken part in that fight. That setup might work - at least for a few blinks of an eye.

  Finally, there was a pile of books and maps next to my little office and I started making a water-tight package out of them, since I couldn't go down and put them into a barrel for two reasons. First, when there would be time for me to leave this floor, there probably would be quite a lot of water and if things worked as I had planned, once I left this floor there wouldn't be any coming back. Secondly, I was also out of barrels. So, some decisions are easy. I tried my backpack and wanted to wince since it was heavier than I had thought, or perhaps I had just been a bit greedy. Whatever, I could make this one trip down the tunnels even if my backpack was heavy. I looked around and pushed that now empty cabinet aside so that the grate was now fully visible and then made one final check, just to make sure that I was still able to lift it. Satisfied with the result, I put it back in place and took a deep breath. Time to start the show.

  It may seem stupid, but the final part of my plan had been Elise's and Alva's pregnancies. Even if I might never see my children, it forced me to think. Yes, we needed to get some more knowledge and the only way to get some of it was to steal those books from the Dark Floor without getting caught. Yes, we needed to slow down those Guardians and Magicians with their plans of creating an army of Trolls and killing all the Elves before doing it - and so on. But there was also one very strong imperative: 'No!' Nothing could be left behind that would point out to Elise or to my other family here. No, because I cared about those people and especially, no because two of them were carrying my babies. Children I might never see.

  My initial plan had been just to start a fire down here, blame the smoking Magician students and then cause a flood by opening the valves which would then break the shitty T-connectors when the pressure could not be released through the uncleaned nozzles. With Rudolf out of the picture, they would have hard time shutting down the water. Only it wasn't that easy. I had no idea how quickly that fire would spread or if it would spread at all. I had had no idea how much water would come out of those two pipes and how quickly it would start filling this floor. I knew that there probably were people here at University that would have been able to give me an estimate quite quickly - but I just couldn't go to them and ask about it. So, I had to try figure it out by myself. Meaning I had to calculate it by myself.

  At first, I couldn't believe the result and I had rechecked it, quite a few times. Then I started to think about the height difference between the reservoir higher on the hill and those old bronze pipes inside the Library. All the pipes came through this Library floor and the reason the system worked on the upper floor was because of that height difference. Down here the height difference was at its maximum. The pipes to which these valves down here were connected were the wide main pipes and the only thing slowing the water down here was the diameter of the pipes. No wonder Rudolf had been worried about those T-connectors. He probably had asked somebody to calculate that thing. Or maybe he had been capable of doing that by himself.

  Since I didn't want to be running ahead of the flood down those dark sewers while carrying a heavy backpack I had made a plan to use two of the cabinets to form a temporary dam in that corner where the sewer was. Most likely it wouldn't last forever, but, according to my calculations, it would last long enough to allow me a safe escape through the sewer. Maybe I would be able to think about this calmly someday, but at the moment I was just a bit worried that I was relying on my own skills in mathematics to save my own life. Since I wanted to make sure that nobody else would enter this floor, I had also tried to make sure that the fire would spread through the top shelves quickly enough to make the situation look really severe. That was the thing I hadn't been able to try. I had no idea how quickly the fire would spread and no way of testing it.

  One more time, I walked into Halvard's room - and I almost knocked before entering. At least he wasn't looking at the door when I opened it. For some time I had been thinking what substances I could be using to make sure that there certainly would be fire and the only working solution had been pure alcohol, since all the others would have their typical smell and that would have been an indication of foul play - and I didn't want that. The only problem with pure alcohol was that its flame had no color and it was way too easy to get burned. So, I moved some books I had treated closer to the space at
the top of the shelves and then I used the rest of the bottle inside the room before lighting the match and closing the door behind me. After making sure that there was nobody close to me, I then turned and waited.

  For a moment I was worried that my plan isn't going to work, but then there was a dull thump and I was able to hear how the air started to move under the door and into the room. Only a few moments later, the flames were reaching out from the uneven joints near the ceiling. I guess that this was a good time to move a bit further away and that wasn't a moment too soon, since suddenly the treated books at the top of the shelves also caught fire. I started running towards the stairs and up to the ground floor. It seemed that I had seriously underestimated how quickly the fire would spread!

  "There's a fire! A fire that started from Halvard's room, sometime after Rurik and the other Magician went in there! There were some raised voices and something else and now there's a huge fire..."

  The guard at the top of the stairs, who had looked as bored as he usually was, looked suddenly very terrified. Fire was one of the words you didn't want to hear here.

  "Fire? Fire? Are you sure?"

  To tell the truth, I would have been almost sure that the guard would not take me seriously and therefore I had used almost as much magic pushing as I could.

  "Of course I'm sure! That other Magician looked a bit odd to my eyes before he went to talk to Halvard, if you ask me... but hurry, how many people are down there! I need to get them out before opening the valves to shut down the fire!"

  The poor Guardian guy was now almost panicking because of all this sudden pressure. After all, this was supposed to be a nice and quiet position with all the benefits and almost no responsibilities. For those with not too much talent but friends in high places.

  "There are... There were first you and then Halvard with one student... yes, Kara - and then came those two... Rurik with some new one whose name I cannot..."

  "But nobody else?"

  "No..."

  "Good, I'll go and find Kara and then I'll open the valves! Inform the rest of the Library!"

  "But I'm not supposed to leave my position..."

  I wanted to scream because of his stupidity.

  "Then use your imagination, shout, scream or do something to attract attention!"

  "But you aren't allowed to make loud noise..."

  I was already on my way back down the stairs and I could already see the smoke crawling forward, close to the ceiling. I started to worry if I had exaggerated somewhat with the pure alcohol. I ran to the place where Kara was studying.

  Once I got there I saw a dark-haired girl dressed in black robe who was so concentrated on the book she was reading that even the fact that I ran in front of her did not make her stop her reading. Shit, there was no time for niceties anymore, so I took the book away from her. That got her attention.

  "What do you think you are doing!"

  That wasn't a question, but an angry statement. I had to remind myself that I wasn't supposed to know anything about her being related to Halvard.

  "Look, you need to get running away from here since there a fire in this floor! Rurik and that new Magician went to the Old Man's room and I think there was some arguing and shouting before a fire started from that corner. You need to go now so that I can open the valves that put out the fire."

  It took only that one sentence to turn her angry look into worried or maybe even terrified.

  "No, I need to go there and help. You don't understand..."

  Before I was able to react she was up and started running towards the corner where Halvard's room was. However, she could only take a few steps before there was an explosion in that direction. Most likely it wasn't that powerful an explosion, but inside this underground floor it was powerful enough. Gunpowder. Of course Halvard had had gunpowder somewhere in his room for that gun of his! Besides making sure that there would be no evidence of my activities, that explosion had another side effect as some of the bookshelves fell down - bookshelves that had had some books on top of them that had been on fire. All of sudden I knew that I would need to hurry to open the valves if I wanted to get out of this Library alive in the way I had planned.

  Kara had been knocked down by the blast. I half-dragged and half-carried her closer to the stairs which were also on the same wall as the valves. Once we got there I let her down. She recovered and stood up.

  "Now, run upstairs and warn the others since I don't trust the guard, he was an idiot. I'll go and open the valves."

  Then I pushed her towards the stairs while running towards the far corner where the valves were.

  Once I got close, I cursed for being so careful that I hadn't put the ladder next to the two valves, since now I was sure that I had to hurry. At least the long wrench was there at the top of the nearby shelf. I opened the wooden ladder and climbed to the top, taking the wrench and putting it to the first valve and started to turn.

  The only thing that happened was that the ladder started to move. That fucking thing was stuck and the way the valve was set I couldn't even use my own weight to turn it. Now I could hear the fire and I couldn't help remembering how I had once escaped from my burning house. How could I have been so stupid that I believed that I could do it again!

  Then I felt something stabilizing the shaking ladder. I looked down and saw Kara holding it.

  "I'll hold it for you!"

  I just nodded and tried again. Slowly I was able to open the first valve and as soon as it was fully opened, I moved the wrench to the second valve and repeated the process. Now I could hear both the fire and also the water, filling the pipes.

  There were tens of feet, maybe even more than a hundred feet of height difference between the top of the reservoir and the Dark Floor of the University. That huge pressure was supposed be cut down by the T-valves which directed the flow to the smaller pipes and again to the nozzles. Only the nozzles didn't work and the quality of the connectors was bad. What happened wasn't the same kind of explosion as the one that came from Halvard's room, but it was still quite exceptional. As was the pillar of water that came from the pipe and hit the wall in front of it. I could hear the same thing happening on the other side. Now there were two forces going amok inside this floor, fire that was spreading on the books on the top of the shelves and all too quickly finding its way down. Then there was the water that was gradually filling the floor from the bottom to the top but before it would do that most of the books would be in ashes.

  Suddenly Kara grabbed my hand.

  "The system failed. You need to close the valves before it's too late!"

  I shook my head.

  "Then the whole Library may burn. I cannot let that happen."

  "There must be something that can be done."

  Yes, there was something that should be done. The fire was spreading way too quickly and I should already be running towards the other end of the large Dark Floor. I was already wondering what I should do with Kara when two things happened almost simultaneously. The first was that the smoke that had been gathering close to the ceiling suddenly caught fire and now it seemed that half of the Library was in fire. The second thing was that the water that was coming from the bursting valves spewed in full force towards the two walls that had been shaking from the huge amounts of water going through them. Then, after one powerful shake, I heard some new noises, and when I saw what was happening I pushed Kara down to the floor.

  If the force of water coming out those two pipes and blowing away the T-connectors had been powerful, this new flood was something terrifying! Suddenly there was water on the floor, and I knew that I could forget all my calculations about how soon this floor would fill. Looking up, it seemed the everything close to the ceiling was in fire and the flames had reached the concrete stairs. There would be no going out that way and I could feel how the fire was using up the breathable air here. I could also see the terror in Kara's eyes since she must have noticed the same thing as I did.

  Once again a par
t of me started creating a map through the Library, thinking where there could be path to the other end of this floor. Some of the shelves had fallen and some were leaning against each other, all now burning at their tops.

  "Follow me, I might know a way out of here."

  I didn't wait for an answer but took Kara's hand and started pulling her after me while working our way between the burning shelves and rising water. If my hair hadn't been fully wet, it probably would have burned in a few places. The whole trip was something you couldn't really imagine: We were more than knee deep in cold water while our heads felt the heat of the burning books above us. Three times we had to turn around and find a new way and all the time the level of the water kept on rising and the flames came lower and lower. Finally, I faced the cabinets on my corner and here the fire was just starting to reach the top shelves. It hadn't come this way because of the stream of air that was coming from the sewers, almost whistling through the grate. I climbed to the top of the cabinet and was immediately able to feel the heat from the nearby fire.