Lord of the Libraries

by Mel Odom

  Juhg found no spark of remorse in his heart for the savaged bodies of the goblinkin they found, nor for the ones that his companions left behind. He didn’t try to find one either. From the things he had endured at the hands of their kind and what he had seen of the slaves around him now, he had no pity left to him.

  At length, they all climbed up from the buried remains of the elven city. Morning stained the eastern skies lavender and rose, with a hint of the golden dawn that was yet to come.

  They took one of the sandsails and some waterskins, and left the other craft to the escaped slaves. The goblinkin didn’t have enough sandsails to transport all the captives back to Fringe, which was the closest city, but the dwarves who had formed the leadership of the freed slaves—over the protests of the dwellers who had regained some sense of their selfishness now that they knew they would live to see another day—promised that arrangements would be made for all who survived.

  Juhg lay back and had his face wound tended by Jassamyn, who had insisted on caring for it before they left the Oasis of Bleached Bones because fresh water would be hard to come by out in the desert if they became becalmed. She also didn’t want to risk infection.

  She used catgut she winnowed from one of her extra bowstrings to make the sutures, then a curved needle that was actually a little too large for the task to sew his face back together. They had nothing for pain, but Juhg was already in so much pain that a little more made no difference at all.

  “I’m no healer,” Jassamyn said as she tied a suture to pull the wound closed.

  “It’s all right,” Juhg replied. “Thank you for taking care of me.” He kept seeing Craugh going down under the mountain of sand.

  “And I’ve no hand for this kind of fine work,” the elven maid apologized. “My mother never saw fit to have me trained in this other than to make do.”

  Tseralyn, although a queen of her own trading empire now, remained a mercenary at heart. Her daughter had taken up the sword and the bow as well, learning horsemanship instead of sewing.

  “This is going to leave a scar,” she said softly. “Quite a terrible one, I’m afraid.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Juhg told her. And it didn’t. Once Jassamyn had finished the last suture and fussed over him for a little longer, she left him alone in the shade of the small tent Raisho had put up for him.

  Lying on the small hill, Juhg looked out over the Oasis of Bleached Bones and found the place was aptly named. Hundreds of bones—dwarven, human, elven, dweller, goblinkin, and others—lay strewn across the golden sand. Some said that it was from the battles that had been fought there. Others claimed that the bones came from the elven forest below, rejecting the bones of the dead as it gathered strength to grow once more, after it had gotten strong enough to break the magical destruction Lord Kharrion’s spell had wrought.

  He hoped that was so, because Craugh deserved a beautiful resting place. Bringing the Grandmagister there to that sea of barrenness was too hurtful to think about. Juhg thought it would have been better if they could come to an elven forest where everything grew healthy and beautiful.

  Before he knew it, the pain subsided enough that fatigue and wear claimed him and he slept.

  That afternoon, when Cobner declared them squared away and Jassamyn finally relented and said that Juhg had slept enough, they readied the sandsail. Several of the dwarves had already taken off for Fringe, intent on making rescue arrangements as soon as possible.

  Raisho took the sandsail’s reins and Cobner occupied the navigator’s seat. The wind didn’t favor them when they departed, though. It came from the east, the direction they needed to travel, so Raisho had to tack into it, heading mainly to the south to achieve any speed at all. Several times gusts rose up that caught the sandsail broadside and nearly overturned it.

  Once he’d gotten comfortable in the sandsail, Juhg slept again. He kept his hands on the book Tuhl had brought with him. The book detailed Tuhl’s efforts to find The Book of Time. The bandage over the side of his face was hot and heavy, and he sweated profusely beneath it.

  During the night, Raisho gave the reins over to Cobner, who had better night vision, and slept. They ran through the desert all night with Cobner at the helm. By morning, the wind changed directions, once more coming from the west so that they could run full ahead of it. But they couldn’t run ahead of the summer storm that unleashed heavy rain that soaked them to the skin for more than an hour before the storm broke up and let the sun out again.

  By afternoon, they were at Grass’s Edge, the first eastern city on the other side of the Drylands. The division between the magically corrupted land of the desert and the city was immediately noticeable. It was as though a master draftsman had laid down a line of demarcation between the desert and the Sighing Forest.

  Fever burned through Juhg when they arrived.

  “You’re too sick to ride,” Jassamyn told him.

  “I’ll ride,” Juhg said. “We’re only three days from Minter’s Stream. We can take a barge there down to the Dragon’s Tongue River.”

  “Dying is not going to save the Grandmagister,” the elven maid informed him.

  “Neither is delaying the journey.”

  Grass’s Edge was more friendly than Fringe. The population was more mixed, the largest population being human, but it was waystation to several elves who liked trading. Several of the elves also acted as guides through the Sighing Forest to the caravans that wended their way to the Dragon’s Tongue River and the interior of the mainland. The elves didn’t do that for the money the caravan masters paid, but to protect the forests from the thoughtless ways of those who didn’t care for it.

  Feeling the heavy giddiness of the fever, Juhg walked the city with Raisho to buy supplies. By the time they had what they needed, Cobner and Jassamyn had traded the sandsail and a few gems they had taken from the elven treasure found in the Oasis of Bleached Bones for horses.

  They stopped long enough for the midday meal at a hostelry that offered venison—which Jassamyn insisted was necessary to help Juhg get his strength back—and were on their way through the Sighing Forest by midafternoon.

  An elven warder met them at the beginning of the trail through the forest. He was young and proud, with a shock of amber-colored hair and haughty purple eyes. He wore a tunic of patterned green that would allow him to disappear into the forest if he chose. A longbow hung over his shoulder and a longsword was belted at his waist. A red-tailed hawk sat on his horse’s saddle. He stood beside the small, quick forest animal.

  “Would you like a guide, Lady?” the elven warder asked.

  Other elves occupied a treehouse campsite farther back in the forest. Only Juhg’s trained eyes allowed him to pick out the resting place the elves had built thirty feet off the ground in the towering trees.

  “I would,” Jassamyn answered in the elven tongue. She spoke a formal version of it, which surprised the elven warder. “If we can arrange a suitable price.”

  The elf smiled a little. “I’m sure that we can find one, lady.”

  Jassamyn dickered for the price as if she were spending the last of her gold, and the elven warder battled with the attitude that she could never make the trip without him and that he had any number of other paying clients waiting. In only a few minutes, they agreed upon a price.

  Juhg swayed in his saddle and might have fallen off if Raisho had not reached over to steady him.

  “Is he sick?” the elven warder asked.

  “He suffers from a wound gotten while fighting goblinkin out in the Drylands,” Jassamyn answered. “I found no poultices I wanted to use in Grass’s Edge.”

  “The Drylands have gotten to be a bad place,” the elf said as he walked to his horse and rummaged through his saddlebags. “Many goblinkin roam the sands out there.”

  “Less so than before,” Cobner said.

  The elf raised an eyebrow.

  The dwarven warrior grinned. “It’s quite a tale. One meant for the sharing on the road
between men what’s been through a scrape or two and know the how and why of putting your life on the line.”

  “Then that shall be the price for the medicine I have to offer.” The elf brought a poultice over to Juhg. “My name is Ashkar. My people are the Woodwind elves.”

  “The reason the Sighing Forest is so named,” Juhg remembered, and found he was talking before he knew he was going to. “Your people have music that sounds like the wind through the trees.”

  Ashkar seemed surprised. “You’ve been through the Sighing Forest before?” He pressed the fragrant poultice under Juhg’s bandage.

  “Yes. With my mentor.”

  “And who is your mentor?”

  “Edgewick Lamplighter,” Juhg said.

  Ashkar looked at him in surprise. “The Grandmagister of the Vault of All Known Knowledge?”

  The old fear hit Juhg like a fist blow. He couldn’t answer.

  “How do you know about the Library?” Jassamyn asked.

  “Lady,” Ashkar said, “all of the mainland is talking about Greydawn Moors and the Library that is said to be there that holds all the books in the world. Word has spread. The defenders who sail the Blood-Soaked Sea have spread the word that the Library is in danger.” He shrugged. “A few have gone there, but so many don’t believe the tales.”

  “They’re true, right enough,” Cobner growled.

  “Then why are you here instead of there? I’ve been told that even though some few have gone to help those who live in Greydawn Moors that the goblinkin are massing anew.”

  “The Grandmagister was taken by a man named Aldhran Khempus,” Jassamyn said.

  Juhg couldn’t believe that his companions were telling everything they knew. The Library was supposed to be kept secret. But the secret is out, isn’t it? It was gone the day smoke from the burning buildings along Yondering Docks touched the sky. Like most secrets, it will never be secret again.

  “We ride to the Haze Mountains now to rescue him,” Jassamyn said.

  “Is it true? What they say? That the Vault of All Known Knowledge contains books on all the races of the world?”

  “Yes,” Juhg croaked. “There are Librarians there, Ashkar, who can teach you the old ways of your people. They can help you find out who your ancestors were, what cities they lived in, what works they left behind. All those things are there.”

  “How do I know what you say is true?”

  Shaking from the fever and from the trepidation about what he was about to reveal, Juhg climbed down from his mount. He walked to the elven warder and took his journal from his jacket. He opened the book and flipped through it, showing the pictures and the writing he had done.

  “This is a book,” Juhg said. “Just the book of our travels. Of my travels. Since I left Greydawn Moors.” He stopped on a page that held a drawing he’d done of the city, another of the Library before it had fallen, and other of the Grandmagister. He showed the elven warder pictures of Raisho and Cobner and Jassamyn. And Craugh. And he wept unashamedly when he told the warder of the wizard’s death in the tunnels of fallen Sweetdew.

  As he went on, unable to stop himself, Juhg watched Ashkar call out to the other elves, who dropped from their lofty retreat and joined them. And still Juhg talked, telling them all of the things the Grandmagister had done, the risks he had taken, and the things that Juhg had read about.

  He talked for hours and didn’t know it. So much was bunched up inside of him that once it started to come out it couldn’t be stopped. He talked in spite of his dry throat and his pounding head and the pain he felt over the loss of Craugh and his trembling knees.

  He showed Ashkar how to write his name in his tongue, taking out his quill and ink and writing it in his journal, then taught the young elven warder—at his request—to write his own name in the dirt at their feet with a twig. Other elves asked that their names be written as well. And Juhg showed them.

  He taught them their names and told them stories about their ancestors. He gave them back parts of themselves that they had never known they had lost. Some of the names of heroes and warriors were known to the warders, and some of them found families in the past that they had never known they had.

  Toward evening, when Juhg finally realized how long he had talked, he was surprised to find that his audience had increased from a dozen or so elven warders to more than a hundred humans, dwarves, and elves, all drawn from the forest or the city to hear the wondrous tales told by the dweller who claimed to be a Librarian from the Vault of All Known Knowledge where all the books in the world had been stored.

  Juhg found that instead of being weakened by the constant barrage of questions and challenges the people before him brought up, that he was invigorated by it. He was a teacher, not just a repository of knowledge that he couldn’t tell anyone. He was giving back more than he had ever known he could give. The career of Librarian had now come full circle; he was giving back everything he had protected and kept secret for so long.

  When people in the back complained that they could not see him properly, a caravan master pulled up a cart and helped Juhg stand on it. Lanterns were hung from the trees and food was provided for those who were hungry.

  Children—human, dwarven, elven, and dweller—gathered at the wheels of the wagon, watching in astonishment as the dweller told of battles past and heroic deeds, and the bravery of the Unity army and the Builders who had caused Greydawn Moors to be torn from the sea floor.

  The talk continued until the morning, though Jassamyn tried to stop it so that Juhg could rest. He couldn’t remember when the fever had left him. Nor could he believe how strong he felt after not sleeping all night. But with the dawning sun, he knew they had to go.

  And when they rode east to the Dragon’s Tongue River, elves and humans and dwarves rode with them.

  “You know what you just done back there, don’t you?” Cobner asked with a wide grin.

  Juhg couldn’t speak, but he was certain the Grandmagister would never approve of what he had done.

  “What you done,” Cobner said, turning in his saddle to gaze back at the long line of riders behind them, “is raise us an army.” He reached over and fiercely hugged Juhg. “By the Old Ones, Juhg, I am proud of you. And the Grandmagister will be too, never you fear.”

  Juhg sincerely hoped so, but they didn’t even know if the Grandmagister was still alive.

  21

  Aldhran Khempus’s Power

  By the time they had reached the Dragon’s Tongue River, more riders had massed for the trip down to the Haze Mountains. Trailtown, the city located on the river that thrived on caravan trade, was overwhelmed with new arrivals looking to see the dweller Librarian they had heard about.

  Ashkar had sent elven warders scrambling through the forest in all directions to notify everyone within hailing distance and to spread the news that the talk they had heard of the mysterious Library and the island where it was hid was all true.

  All during the day as the river barges were prepared, Juhg met with leaders of the different clans and groups in the largest hostelry available, letting them go back to their followers to relay what he had said. The groups had to be scheduled.

  “By the Old Ones,” Raisho said during one of the lulls between meetings, “I’ve never seen so many people in all me life.”

  “Neither have I,” Juhg admitted. In truth, seeing so many people together scared him. Usually bad things happened when so many people got together.

  “One lamentable thing about it, though,” Cobner said, “we’re not gonna be able to sneak up on Aldhran Khempus. Likely he’s got spies out and about to watch things for him.”

  Jassamyn smiled as she fed the draca. “Aldhran Khempus did have spies out. Men he employed to keep their eyes and ears sharp.”

  “Did, did ye say?” Raisho asked.

  “Did,” Jassamyn repeated. “Ashkar and the Woodwind elves knew most of those men. The rest of them they found out about. If there is an Aldhran spy about between here and the
Haze Mountains, it’s one that knows nothing of what’s going on here.”

  Cobner grinned a rogue’s grin. “And you won’t find many goblinkin along the river either. After the dwarves we freed in the Drylands got back with their stories about how the goblinkin were enslaving them to dig in the sands for elven treasure, why, the dwarves took it upon themselves to go goblinkin hunting, claiming they was taking vengeance for what went on in the Drylands.” He rubbed his hands. “Aldhran Khempus won’t know we’re coming, Juhg. Just like Greydawn Moors didn’t know he was coming. Vengeance is gonna rain down on him when we get there.”

  That made Juhg uncomfortable. He walked over to the second-floor window of the rooms they’d been given to do their meetings in and looked out. Since Ashkar had started taking care of his wounds, he’d nearly fully recovered.

  “The Grandmagister is still in the middle of Khempus’s keep,” Juhg said. “If things start to go badly for Khempus, he won’t hesitate to kill the Grandmagister to seek out his own revenge.”

  “When he looks down into the valley before the Haze Mountains,” Raisho said, “he’s gonna know things arc going to go badly for him.”

  “There is other news, too,” Jassamyn said. “Some of the elves from down near the Haze Mountains are talking about the things that are going on there.”

  “What things?” Juhg asked.

  “The goblinkin had been talking about a mysterious red crystal that Aldhran Khempus has been working with. It’s supposed to be very powerful.”

  “A red crystal?” Juhg asked. “The fourth section of The Book of Time is supposed to be red gemstones.”

  “This one is cut in the shape of a square. Aldhran Khempus uses it for a power source.”

  Juhg reached into his jacket. “Last night, I finally had the chance to read through Tuhl’s journal.” They had recovered the Librarian’s personal effects from the beetle room. The beetles wouldn’t eat paper even when it was covered in blood.

  “Last night?” Jassamyn asked. “You were supposed to be sleeping.”