The Scrolls of the Ancients

by Robert Newcomb

  Shailiha and Celeste opened the door and walked into the room, then stopped and gazed about, wide-eyed. The huge room seemed to take up the entire third floor of the mansion. The ceiling was constructed of curved, clear glass, its various sections separated by leaded panes. Outside, the rain had stopped, and rays of sunlight streamed down between the parting clouds.

  The herb cubiculum, as Lionel called it, was part nursery, part laboratory, and part library. One of the long walls was filled from floor to ceiling with bookcases holding texts, charts, and scrolls. Charts carrying esoteric symbols covered another of the walls.

  The nursery area took up about half of the floor and was full of short tables littered with potted plants of innumerable colors, shapes, and sizes. In many cases their leaves, branches, and vines had grown long enough to reach the floor and even to snake their way down the narrow aisles between the tables. Some of the hardier, gnarled vines had found their way to the walls and pillars, which they were climbing in their continued quest for the sunlight that streamed in through the glass ceiling.

  The remainder of the cubiculum was given over to a laboratory. The tables there held strange-looking instruments and containers. Beakers burbled and bubbled, cauldrons steamed, and through crisscrossing lines of glass tubing flowed brightly colored, swirling fluids. The air was warm and fetid; but conversely, its odor was light, airy, and herbal, as if thousands of exotic petals had just bloomed, releasing their scents only moments before.

  But a part of the laboratory area was in terrible disrepair. An entire wall of shelving had been pulled down, spilling hundreds of jars and vessels. Dried herbs lay scattered across the floor among shards of broken glass and weathered labels. Oils had run together into shiny, multicolored puddles. Not far from the mess, the canvas bags that had been rescued from the slavers’ fire lay in a heap next to a large vat.

  “I must find my equalizing spoons, I must.” Lionel continued to chatter as he searched the room, the boards of the hardwood floor occasionally squeaking beneath his feet as he went. “They are absolutely necessary, don’t you see? If I have lost them I will be very vexed, yes, terribly, terribly vexed!”

  After watching Lionel’s distraught antics for a moment, Shailiha gave Celeste a questioning look. Shaking her head slightly, Wigg’s daughter raised an eyebrow, much the same way her father would have. Sensing their lack of understanding, Lionel turned to them.

  “Well, don’t just stand there gawking!” he said anxiously, waving them into the room with one of his short, stubby arms. “There is much to do! Come, come!” Doing as he asked, the two women stepped deeper into the room.

  Shailiha pointed to the canvas bags. “Those contain herbs, don’t they?” she asked. “That’s why Krassus sent his thugs here—to destroy as much of Faegan’s stores as possible, thereby making it far more difficult for us to employ the services of our herbmistress.”

  “Quite right,” Lionel said, still waddling briskly from table to table in search of his mysterious spoons. “Master Faegan explained your predicament to me in his letter. A true quandary, I agree. But now things have gone from bad to worse, I must say, yes, they certainly have.”

  “Please explain,” Celeste said.

  Stopping at another table, Lionel began rummaging around under some papers. Then he squealed with delight. “I have found them!” he hollered.

  Waddling back to Shailiha and Celeste, he proudly held up what looked to be an ordinary set of cook’s wooden measuring spoons, fastened together by a brass ring. But then his expression darkened.

  “Don’t you see?” he said worriedly. “The coming of the slavers has changed everything, oh, indeed it has.”

  “But why?” Shailiha asked anxiously. Her impatience was clearly beginning to seep through. “We saved a lot of the herbs, didn’t we? Why can’t we just take them back to Eutracia and be done with it? Forgive me for being abrupt, but we have no time to waste. Tristan is missing, and we need those things to find him!”

  “But you’re forgetting something, Princess, yes, you are,” Lionel countered. One of his stubby little index fingers went imperiously into the air as he emphasized his point.

  “And just what is that?” Celeste asked.

  Reaching into the pocket of his vest, Lionel pulled out a piece of paper. “Abbey’s list,” he said. “Given the fact that the bags aren’t labeled, even if you take them back with you, how can you be sure that they contain what you need? Many or all of her requirements could have already gone up in smoke, in the bags that the slavers burned. And this vat presents the same problem—full of a mixture of oils, but which oils? Most of the individual containers have been spilled. I’m afraid that’s only the beginning of the problem, yes, it is,” he added.

  Shailiha’s heart fell. What was to have supposedly been a simple mission had quickly turned into a nightmare. If she and Celeste didn’t return to Eutracia with the ingredients Abbey required for her gazing flame, then none of them might ever see Tristan again, much less find Wulfgar, or the other Scroll of the Ancients.

  “And the other problem is?” she asked, not altogether sure she wanted to hear what the gnome’s answer would be.

  “Not only are the bags and the vat not labeled, but their contents have been mixed,” Lionel explained sadly. “If you were to dip into one of them, you would come back with a fistful of herbs or a cupful of oil, to be sure, but you would have absolutely no idea what they were, or in what ratios they had been combined. Don’t you see? If you better understood the art of herbmastery, you would know that this is without question the greatest tragedy that could befall us. Second only to the complete destruction of the cubiculum, of course, of course.”

  Suddenly both Celeste and Shailiha fully understood what it was that Lionel was trying to tell them.

  “Why would the slavers go to all that trouble, mixing everything, dragging it out to the fire in the glade?” Shailiha asked. “If all they wanted to do was destroy what’s here, then why not just set fire to the mansion, sit back, and watch everything go up in flames? Wouldn’t that have been far easier?”

  “Easier, yes,” Lionel agreed as he walked back to the high stool and laboriously climbed up. “But there was more to their mission, yes, much more. And setting fire to the mansion so soon would have been counterproductive to their goals, yes, it would.”

  “How so?” Celeste asked.

  “You’re forgetting something again,” Lionel answered. He pointed to the far wall. “Those texts and scrolls represent more than three hundred years of Master Faegan’s research in the art of herbmastery. They are without doubt the single greatest such collection in existence, and are among his most prized possessions. Surely this Krassus fellow would have wanted them. Apparently the slavers’ orders were to make certain that the herbs and oils were destroyed first, and then to abscond with the research materials. I can only assume that the demonslavers decided to take the herbs and oils to Tree Town, to use them to feed the fires and put even greater fear into the hearts of the gnomes. Then they could take their time removing the research. I also have no doubt that some of the slavers would have stayed behind to kill off the rest of us and set fire to the remainder of the town. Including, of course, the master’s mansion. But then you two arrived, and stopped them.” Lionel paused as a look of deep gratitude came over his face. “Master Faegan doesn’t know it yet, but he has much to thank you for.” Then he paused again. “But there is still something else to tell you, yes, there is,” he said sadly.

  Shailiha wasn’t sure she could take hearing any more. She closed her eyes briefly. “What is it?” she asked softly.

  “When the demonslavers, as you call them, first invaded the mansion, they came upon me here in this room. Strangely, they had their own list of requirements, just as you do. Then they held me as they went about selecting various herbs and oils, packed them up, and took them away before the mixing started. It took some time to search them all out. But in truth the job was not difficult, since all of the v
essels were clearly marked. Master Faegan is nothing if not organized, you know. Then this group of slavers left quickly with their stolen goods, and I think they may have escaped you. And if that is true, then Krassus is now in possession of the very items you came here to procure. I suspect Krassus’ herbmistress is either running low on stores, or she wishes to try new ingredients in her quest to view Wulfgar and the scrolls. Either way, she now has the means to do the job. He is a very clever fellow, this Krassus, yes, he is.”

  “But how could Krassus have known all of this was here?” Celeste asked. “Shadowood was supposed to have been one of the Directorate’s greatest secrets, was it not?”

  “I already know how,” Shailiha answered sadly, shaking her head. “That day in the palace—the day Krassus materialized out of nothing. It is something I shall never forget. Remember how he violated Wigg and Faegan’s minds? From Wigg he gleaned the existence of Shadowood. And from Faegan he learned the whereabouts of his stores and library. He claimed he was searching their memories for information about Wulfgar and the scrolls, but he found much, much more, and he never ever let on.”

  Suddenly thinking of Tristan, Shailiha’s heart fell. But then something began prodding the back of her mind—something that had been bothering her ever since she had first seen the slavers in the glade.

  “But Shadowood is protected from the rest of Eutracia by enchantments,” she mused, “including the invisible canyon that surrounds it, the deadly forest, and the tunnel of bones. Isn’t that so? And the slavers can’t fly. Or at least I have never seen one do so. So how did they get here safely? I can’t imagine the wizards’ protective mechanisms all failing at once. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “If your assumptions are true about Krassus more completely violating my father’s mind than we first thought, then he would have known about those dangers, as well,” Celeste said, rubbing her brow. “But that still doesn’t explain how he overcame them.”

  “I think I know,” Lionel said quietly.

  “How?” the two women asked in one voice.

  “I believe the slavers came by sea,” Lionel answered, “rather than overland, through Eutracia. When Shadowood was created during the Sorceresses’ War, the wizards of the Directorate were far more concerned about invasion from the land side than from the ocean. Remember, at that time the sorceresses of the Coven were their great concern, and the Coven’s armies were approaching from the west. The only safeguard on the eastern side is the Sea of Whispers, and the invisible canyon. If Krassus already knew of the canyon, getting his slavers over it might not have been so difficult. Especially if he is now as powerful a wizard as Master Faegan’s letter suggests. Remember, the canyon was made to keep out those who didn’t know it existed, rather than those who did. It’s invisible only to the untrained. There are many ways that an accomplished wizard might cross it, though Master Faegan would know much more about that than I.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “The slavers that took the goods are now long gone,” he finally added. “In fact, there is most probably another ship still anchored just offshore, waiting for the ones that you killed.”

  Suddenly it all made perfect, tragic sense. Seething in her newfound knowledge, Shailiha yearned desperately to rush right to the coast, where Celeste could use her powers to blow that ship out of the water, along with any demonslavers that might still be aboard. But she knew that she couldn’t. Gathering up whatever herbs and oils which were still salvageable and getting them safely back to Faegan and Abbey simply had to take priority. Krassus, she realized, had bested them at every turn. She turned back to Lionel.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked urgently. “Are any of these mixed herbs or oils still useful?”

  Lionel sighed. “Some, yes. But the rest must first be separated again, then tested to see how and to what extent their potency has been altered. Even then I cannot be sure how they will react if used. Something like this has never happened before on so grand a scale.”

  Curious, Celeste walked over to one of the canvas bags. Bending down, she untied the cinched rope at its top and reached in. She came back with a handful of what appeared to be ground-up, multicolored leaves. “Isn’t there any way to tell what these herbs are?” she asked the gnome.

  “Bring them over to me and I will try,” Lionel said. “But don’t expect too much, no, do not.”

  Celeste carefully emptied her handful of herbs onto the tabletop. From another area of the table, Lionel produced a magnifying glass. Peering through the glass, he pushed and prodded at the herbs. Then he bent over and sniffed at them. His face fell.

  “This is even worse than I thought, yes, it is,” he said, shaking his head. “There is an absolute riot of colors and odors in this handful alone. Too many to even try to count.” Lifting his small head, he looked forlornly at the canvas bags lying on the opposite side of the room.

  “This could take years, perhaps even lifetimes to unravel,” he added. “And from what I glean from Master Faegan’s letter, we don’t have that kind of time. Still, even on a small scale it is worth trying before I send you back.”

  Reaching across the table, he picked up what he had referred to earlier as his equalizing spoons. Unhooking the ring that held them together, he placed them on the table in a neat row. There appeared to be about a dozen of them. He put a small amount of the herb mixture into each one, then sat back and closed his eyes.

  “E’masteratu, ventricumtitas, didebfan, sente!” he chanted deeply. Almost immediately, the spoons began to move.

  Shailiha and Celeste watched, spellbound, as the line of spoons rose into the air over the tabletop. Lionel opened his eyes. “Watch carefully,” he said.

  The wooden spoons began to shake back and forth, spilling some of their precious contents onto the table. As they did, they rose a bit higher, each to a different level. Then they came to hover in a neat, level row once again. When they had finally all stopped moving, Lionel spoke again.

  “R’santos, tenticualrem, wensicat!”

  The spoons obediently lowered themselves back down to the table. Curious, Shailiha and Celeste looked down into them.

  There was now a different color and amount of herb in each spoon.

  “Each spoon now only contains one kind of herb, doesn’t it?” Shailiha asked. “But gnomes don’t have endowed blood. How could you make this happen?”

  “And that was Old Eutracian you were speaking, wasn’t it?” Celeste interjected. “How does a Shadowood gnome come to know Old Eutracian?”

  Lionel chuckled. “Master Faegan is indeed wise,” he answered. “He took the liberty of enchanting these spoons centuries ago, for just such an emergency as this—namely, the untangling of mixed herbs. They are enchanted to react to anyone who recites the proper phrases in Old Eutracian. One need not be of endowed blood to make them work—one need only be able to say the commands correctly. There are other items here in the herb cubiculum that the master enchanted so that I might be able to use them if need be. And it certainly seems our day has come. Still, this only solves part of the problem, and only to a very minor degree. I’m afraid the most difficult part is yet to come.”

  Hopping down off his stool, Lionel beckoned the women to follow him over to what appeared to be a bare wooden wall. He raised his hands.

  “P’intastoretas, vintostmante erasdeat tomirenticas!”

  A vertical line appeared down the center of the wall, dividing it into equal halves. Then the gap grew wider as the two sections slowly slid to opposite sides, eventually revealing another wall covered by a gigantic chart.

  The chart was arranged in dozens of horizontal rows. Each row held hundreds of individual squares, and each square was its own color. The color of each row darkened slightly in hue as it ran from left to right.

  As Shailiha looked up, she saw that the top row was all descending hues of violet, each of the squares becoming lighter as one’s eye followed along to the right. And as one looked down the rows fr
om top to bottom, the colors of the rows changed gradually, following the order of a rainbow. After the violet rows came others in blue, green, yellow, orange, and finally red. Each of the individual, colored squares seemed to be labeled. A ladder was propped up over the chart, topped with wheels that lay in a track running along the entire length of the chart.

  “I give you the Chart of Herbal Hues,” Lionel said proudly. “Master Faegan and I created it.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Celeste said. “But what is it for?”

  “It uses the color of the herb to help us identify the family it comes from,” he explained.

  From the top of the table he took up a clear glass globe that had a wooden, vertical handle mounted at its bottom. In the center of the globe could be seen a vertical rod with what looked like a miniature weathervane mounted at its top. Carrying the odd globe upright, Lionel walked to the ladder and climbed about halfway up.

  He pointed to the equalizing spoons that still lay on the table. “Please bring me one of those,” he asked. “For our purposes just now, any will do.”

  Celeste retrieved one of the spoons and handed it up to Lionel. The color of the herb in the spoon was a soft yellow-green. Lionel looked down at the herb, and then he raised an eyebrow.

  “Not an altogether simple one to start with, but it should prove an interesting challenge,” he mused. Asking Shailiha to push the ladder, he directed her to a spot about midway across the face of the chart. Placing the spoon down carefully on one of the ladder steps, he used both hands to twist the handle at the bottom of his globe. It popped open. Carefully, he sprinkled a pinch of the yellow-green herbs into the base of the open handle, then twisted it closed again. He handed the spoon back down to Celeste.