by Mel Odom
“Dragon?” Juhg repeated, stuck on the possibility that one of those monsters might even now be lurking about outside awaiting them.
“Of course there’s a dragon,” Craugh growled. “I was going to tell you about the dragon.”
“You might have mentioned it before now,” Juhg grumbled.
Roaring war cries, the dwarves and humans took up the attack once more, chopping into the backsides of the bog beasts with unrelenting zeal. Shooting with their incredible skill, the elven warders put more arrows into their targets around their fellow combatants. The two back bog beasts had to turn to deal with their opponents.
The bog beast facing Craugh rushed forward, flinging both hands out so that vines shot toward him.
The wizard ducked, whipped his hat off with one hand, spoke a Word, and sent his hat spinning toward the bog beast. Inches from the creature, the hat turned into a flaming fireball nearly two feet in diameter that slammed into the bog beast’s chest with a boom! louder than thunder.
The creature rocked back on its tree root toes. Dry cracks spread across its chest where the fireball had struck. Craugh pressed his advantage, ducking in and driving the end of his staff into his opponent’s chest. Startled, the bog beast glanced down and started to close a hand around Craugh’s staff, then the dryness spread through the creature and it fell to pieces.
One of the dwarves grabbed an unbroken lantern from one of the wall sconces. The wick remained aflame inside the glass. Yelling a warning to his fellow warriors, the dwarf heaved the lantern at the bog beast. The lantern shattered against the creature, spreading oil that quickly caught fire. Dry patches showed on the bog beast and it began struggling to move. A moment later, spreading fires throughout the wreckage of the bar, the bog beast broke into pieces.
Taking note of what was going on, the elven warders dipped their arrows in oil and loosed flaming shafts into the remaining bog beast, quickly reducing it to chunks of dry earth that tumbled across the shattered tavern floor. The combatants cheered at once, no longer divided in their goals while facing a common foe.
“Go,” Craugh said, “quickly. We may yet face more opposition.” He waved his arms to usher Juhg and Raisho into motion.
“Mayhap if we were to split up,” Raisho suggested to the wizard. “Ye can go one way. Me an’ Juhg, we’ll go another.”
“No,” Craugh said.
Raisho gave a disappointed frown. “I thought not. But I’m tellin’ ye now, if ’n ye get me ship busted up somewheres, ye’re gonna be responsible for replacin’ ’er.”
Together, they ran out of the building as the flames leaped higher.
“Too bad about your hat,” Juhg told Craugh.
“Eh?” the wizard said. Then nodded. “Right. My hat.” He snapped his fingers and suddenly the hat was sailing through the air toward them. Effortlessly, Craugh caught the hat and clapped it onto his head. He smiled and wiggled his eyebrows. “This hat has gotten me out of several tight spots over the years. One day, mayhap, I’ll tell you the story of how I acquired it.”
Intrigued as he was by the story of the wizard’s hat, Juhg glanced overhead, spotting the two moons that circled the world. Bright red and speeding on the first of his trips across the night sky, Jhurjan the Swift and Bold was full and close now, occupying fully a tenth of the sky. Farther to the south, glowing a demure pale blue, Gesa the Fair made her way more sedately, with grace and self-control.
There were, thankfully, no dragons in sight.
They ran on, racing down the hill toward the harbor, then down the steep, crooked steps, and—finally—across the swaying bridges that connected the decrepit docks. When they reached Moonsdreamer, Raisho hailed his crew, who were already crowded at the railing with weapons to hand.
In minutes, they cast off and Moonsdreamer’s sails scaled the masts and belled out from the ’yards. Juhg stood in the bow. Before he knew it, his personal journal and a piece of charcoal were in his hands. By Jhurjan’s light, he quickly blocked out the shapes of the bog beasts. Despite the danger, it was what Grandmagister Lamplighter had trained him to do. He wrote his questions for Craugh in the margins while Raisho got his ship into the wind with all due haste.
Unfortunately, Craugh didn’t intend to answer many questions.
Seated in the galley with a hot cup of spiced choma at the table before him, Juhg looked at the wizard. “Who sent the bog beasts?”
Craugh scowled. “I told you I wouldn’t influence your reading of Wick’s book. I meant that.”
“Those were bog beasts,” Juhg said. “I’ve never seen creatures like them.”
“See? Even more reason I shouldn’t answer your idle curiosities.”
Not believing what he was hearing, Juhg said, “They tried to kill us. I’d say that I’m motivated by more than idle curiosity.”
“Still,” Craugh said, “your neutrality in the matter of decoding the book is important, Grandmagister. You have a duty to do the best that you can.”
Using his title as he did, Juhg knew that Craugh sought to motivate him. However, knowing the wizard was a manipulator negated that maneuver. Unfortunately, Juhg also saw the truth in Craugh’s words, so it may well have been that the pronouncement wasn’t a manipulation. Thinking like that made Juhg’s head hurt.
In the end, he knew what Grandmagister Lamplighter would have done: seek out the mysteries the book held.
“All right, all right.” Juhg sighed. “I understand all that, and mayhap I even agree that you might be correct in your assessment of how things should be handled.”
“Thank the Old Ones,” Craugh replied with a small smile that he didn’t truly mean.
“That said,” Juhg went on, “what can you tell me?”
Craugh counted off answers on his fingers. “That we are arrayed against a powerful enemy. That Lord Kharrion’s Wrath truly exists. That Wick was on the trail of it all these years ago. That there are secrets that no one was meant to know all those years ago that we must surely find out now.” He paused for a moment. “Oh, and one other thing: The stakes are high.”
Juhg waited.
“What you may find out in that book,” Craugh said, “might well affect the futures of three different communities. One or all will prove guilty of some of the vilest villainies perpetrated during the Cataclysm. When others find out, old enmities might well be re-established and result in hundreds or thousands of deaths.” He regarded Juhg. “Is that enough?”
More than enough, Juhg thought, suddenly feeling glum and overwhelmed.
“Scribbler.”
Juhg looked back to see Raisho standing in the doorway to the stairs that led up the deck. The familiar roll of the ship across the waves rocked them.
“There’s no sign of pursuit,” Raisho said. “We escaped clean enough.”
“Good.” Juhg felt a little relief. He picked up Grandmagister Lamplighter’s book and ran a finger along the charred pages. Curiosity nagged at him as it always did.
“Doesn’t mean there won’t be any,” Raisho went on, and the statement was more of a question.
“I’ve laid enchantments on the ship,” Craugh said. “We’re protected better than most.”
Raisho nodded. “I’ll keep double guards posted in any case. But what ’eading should we take?”
“You’ve stores packed away?” Craugh asked.
“Aye.”
“Then stay at sea.”
Raisho frowned. “I’ve got perishable goods aboardship.”
“Continue the trade route we planned on,” Juhg said. “We don’t want to draw any more attention than we have to. A trade ship not trading will trigger prying interests.”
“We may need to travel once you have the book deciphered,” Craugh pointed out. “It would be better if we knew from where.”
“We’ll deal with that when—and if—it happens,” Juhg replied. He looked at the wizard, expecting an argument.
Instead, Craugh quietly agreed.
That let Juhg know how
serious the situation was. And how dangerous. He sipped the choma and turned his attention to the book that contained one of Grandmagister Lamplighter’s adventures he hadn’t known anything about. In a short time, the coded entries turned into words in his mind and he wrote them down in a new book.
1
The Tavern Brawl
“Wick.”
Placing his finger inside the book to hold his place, Second Level Librarian Edgewick Lamplighter sighed and glanced up at the speaker. He tried not to show his displeasure at being interrupted at his reading, but it was difficult.
“What is it?” Wick asked.
“Your friends,” Paunsel whispered. He was a dweller like Wick, only grossly rotund with slicked-back hair and a thin mustache. He wiped his hands nervously on a bar towel.
“What friends?” Wick was immediately interested, for as a Librarian he had few friends among the sailors and merchants that lined the Yondering Docks in Greydawn Moors.
Paunsel jerked a hesitant thumb over his shoulder.
For the first time, Wick heard the raucous laughter and ribald poetry coming from the tavern’s main room. Choosing to be alone with his book (and only a nonreader would call it alone because those poor unfortunates couldn’t truly trigger the magic captured in the pages of a book!), Wick had retreated to one of the small side rooms and refused to acknowledge the baleful glances the cleaning crews had given him.
Peering cautiously around the tavern owner, keenly aware that one of the back doors out of the buildings was close at hand just as he’d planned, Wick stared into the main room. Of course, since the Wheelhouse Tavern served all who had coin to pay for it, the place was packed with dwarves come to slake their prodigious thirst.
“The dwarven … pirates,” Paunsel whispered.
Glee touched Wick’s heart then. There was only one ship that came to the Yondering Docks carrying dwarven pirates. Many months had passed since he’d last seen the crew of One-Eyed Peggie. He looked forward to seeing Cap’n Farok, Hallekk, Zeddar, Naght, Jurral, Cook, and even Critter, the foul-tempered rhowdor ship’s mascot.
But Wick also knew what the ship’s crew was like when they were in their cups. He looked at Paunsel. “Are they fighting someone?”
“Not yet.”
“But the likelihood is there?”
Paunsel looked aggrieved. “Yes. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered you at your studies, Librarian.” The tavern owner was one of the few in Greydawn Moors who talked respectfully with Librarians.
Over the years, most of the townsfolk had come to resent the Grandmagister and the Librarians, insisting that the food sent up to the Vault of All Known Knowledge was a burden the rest of the population shouldn’t have to bear. Of course, it was mostly the dwellers that said that. The elven warders who guarded the island’s forests and mountains, the humans who pretended to be pirates out in the Blood-Soaked Sea, and the dwarven guards and craftsmen were more generous.
Hmmm, Wick thought, for roving across to the Shattered Coast and beyond had taught him to always carefully examine his options. Renewing acquaintances at the cost of becoming embroiled in a battle isn’t all that appetizing. Especially on a full stomach.
Despite Hallekk and Cobner’s attempts to turn him into a pirate or a warrior, Wick was very much satisfied with being a Librarian. He preferred to do his adventuring in the stacks of romances in Hralbomm’s Wing while avoiding Grandmagister Frollo’s wrath. The Grandmagister was of the opinion that Wick should use his personal reading time more wisely.
“Well?” Paunsel prompted.
“I’m thinking,” Wick replied. He tried drumming his fingers on the tabletop the way Grandmagister Frollo did, but evidently the task wasn’t as easy as he’d believed. Also, the cadence of Taurak Bleiyz’s brave war song was stuck in his head from the book and his fingers kept finding that beat.
“They’re going to tear up my tavern,” Paunsel said.
The angry voices in the next room rose to a new, and even more threatening, level. Wick’s ears pricked, listening with more experience than he’d ever intended for the hiss of swords clearing leather.
“Who are they arguing with?” Wick asked. Perhaps if it’s someone Hallekk and the others can easily frighten off, I could go meet them. After all, if they win an argument, their purses will open and the wine will flow. It was a pleasing prospect. But he longed to get Taurak Bleiyz across the spiderweb and safely away from his enemies.
“Humans,” Paunsel sneered. “The crew of Stormrider.”
Wick knew of the ship and the crew. If ever there were warriors that could evenly meet dwarven warriors, it was Stormrider’s crew.
“What are they arguing about?”
Paunsel sighed, obviously on the verge of giving up asking for help. “Something that happened long ago. An alliance or something that met Lord Kharrion’s goblinkin army in the Painted Canyon.”
“Ah.” Although Wick didn’t know the story of the battle well, he was a Librarian. A recently promoted Second Level Librarian at that. He thought he could settle an argument between ships’ crews and probably earn himself a few more cups of sparkleberry wine for his troubles. “I can handle this.”
“Thank the Old Ones,” Paunsel said, though with far more sarcasm than Wick would have wanted to hear. The tavern keeper waved the Librarian to the main room.
Wick placed his bookmark within the romance and glanced at the page number to memorize it just in case before putting it into his book bag. The memorization was a practice he’d made a habit of when he’d first gone to the Great Library as a Novice. Then he slid out of the booth, straightened the lines of his Librarian’s robe—now gray with dark blue fringe, changed from white to denote his promotion—grabbed the straps of his book bag, and headed for the main room.
The room was packed with sailors and cargo handlers. Lanterns filled with glimmerworm juice glowed softly blue in sconces. Several others hung from ships’ wheels suspended from the ceiling. A number of patrons gathered around the fireplace at the other end of the room. Humans and dwarves sometimes mixed, but the five elven warders in from the forest to trade for goods they couldn’t get on their own in the wild sat by themselves.
“—’Twas Oskarr what betrayed the alliance at Painted Canyon,” a human at one of the tables declared. He was easily six and a half feet tall, almost a giant. His shaggy blond hair trailed down to his shoulders and matched the full beard he sported.
“No!” Hallekk bellowed, standing at the bar with his fellow pirates from One-Eyed Peggie. He was tall for a dwarf, and an axe handle would be challenged to span his shoulders. His dark brown beard was braided with yellowed bone carved into fish shapes. A bright kerchief bound his head and gold hoops danced in his ears. He wore a seaman’s breeches and shirt, and held his great battle-axe casually at his side.
In Wick’s opinion, One-Eyed Peggie’s first mate didn’t look like a dwarf anyone would want to rile. Unless, of course, he amended, you’re a human giant and you’ve had too much to drink. Wick could see at once that the situation could easily get out of control.
“Now I’ve kept a civil tongue in me head while ye’ve been blatherin’ on about what happened back then,” Hallekk roared loud enough to earn the attention of everyone in the tavern, “but I’ll not have ye besmirchin’ the name of Oskarr.”
“Don’t let him talk to you like that, Verdin,” one of the other human sailors piped up. “Stupid dwarf is thick everywhere else, ye know he’s gotta be thick in the head, too.”
Hallekk bristled at the insult.
Verdin’s eyes narrowed as he strived to look even more fierce and threatening.
“Ye better not be a-glowerin’ at me,” Hallekk growled in warning. “I don’t take kindly to such intimidation.”
“Go on, Hallekk!” a shrill voice called out. “Poke him in the eyes! Tweak his nose! Pull his hair! Thump him till he rings like a drum!”
The voice drew everyone’s attention to the rafters above the counter, for th
e moment silencing the verbal sparring between Verdin and Hallekk. A rhowdor stood on the rafter, dressed in bright plumage that began with an explosion of red on its chest and wings with a few scattered patches of yellow. The ends of the wings and the tail feathers turned green that was so dark it looked blue and black. The bird flailed his wings, shadowboxing unsteadily on the rafter and breathing in short gusts through its curved beak.
Little more than a foot tall with twin pink horns jutting from above its hatchet face, the avian peered down with its one good emerald eye. A black leather patch that bore a skull and crossbones made of studs covered the other eye. A golden hoop earring dangled from one ear tuft.
The rhowdor was intelligent, capable of speaking the common language as well as any others it learned. There were few of the creatures in the world these days. This one was named Critter and crewed aboard One-Eyed Peggie.
“What are ye a-lookin’ at, ye daft idiot?” Critter called out, taking a break from matching skills with its imaginary opponent. “Ain’t ye ever seen a talkin’ bird before?”
It was obvious that Verdin hadn’t.
“Why, ye’re a pantywaist, ye are,” the rhowdor crowed fiercely. It walked along the rafter, and from the stumbling steps it took, Wick knew the bird had drunk far too much for its own good. “I could take ye with one wing tied behind me an’ me tail feathers on fire.” The bird held one wing behind its back and fluttered the other one, nearly knocking itself from the rafter. “I’ll show ye. Somebody get me a rope an’ tie me wing up behind me back.”
“Somebody get me a stewpot,” Verdin replied, and several of the tavern’s patrons—including members of One-Eyed Peggie’s crew—laughed uproariously.
“I’ll keelhaul ye!” Critter swore. “I’ll turn ye inside out an’ hang ye with yer own tripe!” The rhowdor launched itself from the rafter, spreading its multicolored wings out in a three-foot span that suddenly made it look huge. It flew straight at Verdin, claws raking the air.
The human sailor ducked beneath the claws, eyes wide with surprise.
Critter sailed above the heads of the other patrons, wobbling drunkenly like a floundering ship, and managed to swing around for another pass. It screeched at the top of its voice.
