Lord of the Libraries (25 page)
“Here,” Juhg called from atop the crates. The two smugglers coughed and wheezed below him. The hammock webs had missed them.
Raisho started forward at once, walking around the outer edge of the hammock webs where the frenzied spiders still crawled. Firelight skated along his blade, though it was dulled because of the matte finish he preferred for night work. He halted a few feet from the smugglers, spotting Juhg atop the crates.
Lifting his cutlass meaningfully to the two smugglers by Juhg, Raisho said, “Ye have a choice: surrender or die. Makes me no nevermind.” He struggled not to cough but was overcome all the same.
Neither of the smugglers felt compelled to fight. They threw their blades down and lay on the ground at Raisho’s direction.
As if untouched by the smoke, Craugh walked to the middle of the ledge. He took off his pointy hat and pulled the crossbow quarrel from it. With the hat back on his head, he glared at the smoke. He spoke arcane words in a guttural voice thickened by the smoke, then lifted his staff. Emerald embers swirled around the end of his staff, then darted out into the center of the smoke mass gathered at the ceiling.
Coughing and struggling to breathe, Juhg clambered down from the crates. His lungs felt like they were on fire, and it seemed like coals burned in his eyes.
Slowly at first, but with gathering speed, the emerald embers began a circular motion. As the speed increased, a funnel formed and the smoke was sucked up toward the opening in the third floor.
Moving so that he could see better, Juhg watched as the smoke slid up through vents in the third floor ceiling.
Craugh turned his attention to the flaming pitch still burning across
the surface of the water below. The funnel elongated, reaching over the ledge and snaking down to the flames, then pulled them up through the third floor ceiling as well.
the surface of the water below. The funnel elongated, reaching over the ledge and snaking down to the flames, then pulled them up through the third floor ceiling as well.
As the fire left the building, the room grew steadily darker.
“Apprentice,” Craugh said. “There are lanterns in those crates. It might be an idea if you lit some of them before we end up in the dark.”
His lungs and eyes already feeling better, though he’d just noticed that he’d abraded his fingers with all his clever scampering along the ledge, Juhg went to get the lanterns.
Dead End
A
s it turned out, the spiders’ venom wasn’t lethal, but it did deliver a long-lasting paralysis.
s it turned out, the spiders’ venom wasn’t lethal, but it did deliver a long-lasting paralysis.
In the lantern light, Juhg examined one of the spiders killed by the fire as he listened to Craugh’s interrogation of the smuggler leader, Dusen. He thought the spiders might have been kin to the strider spiders that commonly lived in the area in pools of water. Or perhaps they were kin to the coffin spiders that lived in the woods along the mainland and sometimes ended up floating in spider eggs into Imarish.
Only strider spiders weren’t as big as his fist like these were, and coffin spiders were known to kill a grown person with a single bite. Glancing at the swelling on the smuggler leader’s scarred face, Juhg judged that the bites were necrotic and would probably leave cherry-sized pits in the flesh that might never heal properly. The effect was not going to improve Dusen’s already ragged features.
Dusen kept his story simple, but Juhg felt certain the man was in a lot of pain and not all that interested in lying. He lay paralyzed and helpless, and he said the bites felt like coals dug in tight against his flesh. Several of the other smugglers had groaned and moaned terribly, until
Craugh—finally tiring of the caterwauling—put them all to sleep with a spell.
Craugh—finally tiring of the caterwauling—put them all to sleep with a spell.
“I’m the son of a merchant,” Dusen insisted. “I’ve just fallen upon hard times. I don’t deserve to be treated like this.” He managed to throw his head around a little.
Unimpressed, Craugh peered down at his captive. “You’re a thief.”
“Through no fault or intention of my own,” Dusen said. “My father was a guildsman, a man of considerable wealth. The other guildsmen grew jealous of him, though. They started taking their business elsewhere. Soon my father fell upon hard times.”
Silently, and perhaps a little pessimistically, Juhg guessed that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in Dusen’s case. Probably his father was a bad thief as well. Or an overly greedy one.
“It wasn’t long before my father lost his fleet of trading vessels,” Dusen said. “He hanged himself from the clock tower in the Metalworks District. It was a terrible thing. I was ordered up to cut him down.” His eyes turned down and crocodile tears poured down his cheeks. “It was the … hardest … thing I’ve ever had to do.”
Raisho rolled his eyes.
“After my father’s death, after my mother was thrown from our house and we were left to fend for ourselves in the street,” Dusen went on, “I started stealing from the guildsmen that had broken my father. I only saw fit to take back what they had stolen from my father.”
“What of your mother?” Jassamyn asked in a voice that offered only cold rebuke. “Did you leave her to fend for herself as well?”
Dusen thought quickly. “Of course not!” It was hard acting haughty when he didn’t have body language to use. “I took care of her until she died … from … from a broken heart. It was terrible, I tell you. Just watching her wither away. My wife tried to help but—b—”
“Wife?” Cobner growled.
“Yes,” Dusen said. “Didn’t I tell you? I have a wife and son. A wonderful woman, actually, and hardly deserving of the cruel life fate has thrust upon her when I lost my inheritance. And my son, truly a wonderful lad. Smart as a whip, too.”
“A wife and son?” Cobner shook his head, then stuck his finger down his throat and made retching noises.
Dusen’s eyebrows leaped. “You don’t believe me?”
“No,” Cobner said. “I think ye’re wastin’ our time.”
“It’s true!” Dusen said. “Everything I have told you is true!”
Settled on his haunches and looking totally comfortable with unconscious, spiderwebbed smugglers lying strewn all around him, Craugh looked at the smuggler leader. “Enough!”
Dusen started in again, pointing out that he should be shown forgiveness. After all, it was dark and he couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t been under attack by the Imarish Peacekeepers, who had helped his father hang himself as it turned out. And the Peacekeepers only wanted him dead, Dusen insisted, because they didn’t like the competition he brought to their own efforts to steal the city blind.
Craugh gestured with a forefinger. A single green spark sailed from his forefinger to touch one of the spiders, which still crawled over the inert bodies of the smugglers. He had laid out a small spell that kept the spiders from coming among them.
Summoned by the wizard’s magic, one of the fattest and ugliest spiders Juhg had ever seen scuttled across the gravel-covered expanse of the ledge. Jassamyn stepped back from the horrid thing.
It would take an elven warder to find love in his heart for such a thing,
Juhg decided.
Juhg decided.
“No!” Dusen cried. “Make it go away! Don’t let it near me!” With the paralysis, he couldn’t do anything but watch the spider’s dedicated approach with his single, wide-open eye.
The spider caught hold of the smuggler leader’s hair and climbed up on top of his head. Stopping on Dusen’s eyepatch, the spider rocked back onto its hindmost legs and prepared to strike.
Dusen screamed. The tortured sound ululated through the empty building.
“Now,” Craugh said calmly and coldly, “you will speak only when I ask you to. Otherwise the spider will bite your eye and that sight will be the last thing you ever see because the poison will rot your flesh. Do you understand?”
Nausea stirred in Juhg’s stomach. He knew from past experience that Craugh could be hard and merciless, but he had never seen the wizard take such advantage of a helpless foe.
Is this what he was like when he went in search of The Book of Time?
Juhg couldn’t help but wonder.
And if it is, does this mean that he’s reverting to that
older self now that the prize is almost in his hand?
He swallowed hard, filled with the fear of what was about to happen to the smuggler leader as well as the rest of their little group. He hoped that Hallekk had—or would—at least rescued the Grandmagister. If Craugh truly let his evil nature show, Juhg could only hope that the Grandmagister was clever enough to stop him.
Juhg couldn’t help but wonder.
And if it is, does this mean that he’s reverting to that
older self now that the prize is almost in his hand?
He swallowed hard, filled with the fear of what was about to happen to the smuggler leader as well as the rest of their little group. He hoped that Hallekk had—or would—at least rescued the Grandmagister. If Craugh truly let his evil nature show, Juhg could only hope that the Grandmagister was clever enough to stop him.
“I … understand,” Dusen whispered, staring in hypnotic fascination at the spider’s poised legs.
“Good.” Craugh laid his staff across his knees and gave every appearance of being totally comfortable. “Tell me how you found this place.”
Talking slowly and with care, Dusen relayed how Moog—one of the smugglers who was now dead and whose body now floated in the dark water below——had followed the little redhaired dweller out of curiosity to the building near the broken bridge. The building had not been nearly as sunken then as it was now. Afterward Moog had shown the building to Dusen, shown how the windows had been filled in against the flooding that occurred when the island it had been built on had sunk beneath the waves.
“Why do you think this building was so preserved?” Craugh asked.
“There was supposed to be a treasure here from the time before Lord Kharrion raised up the goblinkin hordes and nearly took over the world. That has always been the rumor.”
“Was there a treasure?”
“Perhaps. But it was long gone from this place.”
“But enough people believed in it that the building was preserved,” Craugh pointed out.
“I had the story from one of the taletellers in the Quarry District, where the dwarves cut stone from the heart of the earth to construct buildings with. He told me that the dwarves a long time ago spent years sealing up this building and others around it, then pumping it dry.”
“And no treasure was found?”
“A few things. Gold coins. A scattering of gems. Enough so that people knew a treasure had once been held here. Either it was taken when the underwater quakes reaved the island or shortly thereafter, before the sinking became so extensive.”
“Did anyone ever say why only this place was affected?”
According to the story Dusen had heard, the buildings had once been part of the palace courts of Skydevil’s Roost, but the smuggler leader
wasn’t sure that place actually existed or was only a tale that had been told so long it had become like truth.
wasn’t sure that place actually existed or was only a tale that had been told so long it had become like truth.
“It was part of the mainland in those days,” Dusen said. “Not an island. That didn’t happen till the Cataclysm when Lord Kharrion destroyed Teldane’s Bounty farther to the south when the Unity armies tried to hold the goblinkin back so they could evacuate people caught between them and the sea. There weren’t enough ships to get all those people to safety. That’s why there are so many bones in this area. They didn’t just come from the people who died here during the sinking of this city. You’ll find a lot of goblinkin bones around here, too.”
Juhg remembered the stories of the battle fought at Teldane’s Bounty. The Unity armies had held as long as they could, staving off the goblinkin hordes while ships ferried the women and children to safer places north and south of the confrontation. Even then, they hadn’t succeeded in saving all of them. Several innocents perished when Lord Kharrion used the spell that broke the mainland and created the Shattered Coast, reaching for miles in all directions from the epicenter. It was the single largest display of magic ever known to have been unleashed. The dwarven warriors, humans, and elves had died in the destruction or the slaughter that took place shortly after.
Then, when it seemed no more evil could be done, Lord Kharrion had strode among the fields of dead and—under a moonsless sky—raised dead goblinkin warriors up, used his magic to wed their decayed flesh and the special clay he had made up with the fear and suffering of the innocents who had been slaughtered. He had called them Boneblights, and everyone who opposed him learned to fear them.
Juhg had seen the loathsome creatures in Greydawn Moors. Nightmares still haunted him, though they had grown smaller in light of everything else he had learned.
“Seadevil’s Roost was destroyed before then,” Craugh said.
“Mayhap. You hear stories both ways.”
“Do you know what Wi—” Craugh caught himself before he spoke the Grandmagister’s name. “What the dweller was searching for?”
Dusen hesitated.
The spider flexed its legs and leaned in closer.
“I don’t know,” Dusen said. “Moog followed the dweller down into the building, but he didn’t follow him into the lower levels.”
“The floor down there isn’t the lowest level?” Craugh asked.
“No. There are two floors beneath it.”
“Flooded?”
“No.”
Juhg knew there had to have been from the description in the Grandmagister’s journal, but he hadn’t had time to take everything in. Still, the lower floor didn’t look like the one the Grandmagister had talked about in the coded journal.
“Those rooms are walled up and protected,” Dusen went on. “When Moog followed the dweller’s path later, he found where the dweller’s wet footprints went to a false wall.”
Juhg’s pulse raced. The Grandmagister had written about the false wall.
“Later, after Moog had told me about this place, I realized we could use it as a hideout. You only had to swim a little ways back then. Now, this whole building lies beneath the sea. Copper pipes run to the surface to bring fresh air into this place. They are so low now that when the water is bestirred they sometimes let in the sea. Soon, we will either have to add onto the pipes or abandon this place.”
“Did the dweller leave with anything?” Craugh asked.
“Not that Moog could see. We went in search of him later but he was already gone.”
“Why did you go after him?”
“Because of the thing I found. I didn’t understand it, but I know it must be worth something. If it is even real.”
“What thing?” Craugh asked.
Following Dusen’s direction, Juhg stopped at the blank eastern wall in the fourth room to the north from the main room. He’d used his compass to find his way. Marks from tools, axes and swords and crowbars, dented the wall in several places.
“Here,” he announced.
The room had once been the private quarters of the baron of Seadevil’s Roost. Remnants of an iron bed and other furniture lay scattered around the room. There were also the bones of the dead, all gathered in a
heap where they had evidently rolled after the building had tilted during one of the subsequent settlings.
heap where they had evidently rolled after the building had tilted during one of the subsequent settlings.
Here and there, bits of gilt glinted on the woodwork, but for the most part the room was filled with mold and mildew and the wood was rotted and eaten by worms. Small fish and crabs lived in the ankle-deep water that covered the floor.
According to the Grandmagister’s notes in the latter half of his journal, Seadevil’s Roost had once been governed by a human named Gaultanot who had convinced neighboring human communities to pool their resources together—including their ships——till they became a strong trade guild. Gaultanot had ruled as baron of Seadevil’s Roost, and by all accounts he had been a good man.
How then,
Juhg couldn’t help wondering again,
did Kharrion tempt the baron into holding one of the sections of
The Book of Time?
And why break up such a thing of power? Was it truly just to outwit Craugh and the others who pursued him? Or was there another reason that couldn’t yet be seen?
He sighed. One of the frustrations of having a mind trained to think and consider possibilities was that it couldn’t simply be stopped once engaged.
Juhg couldn’t help wondering again,
did Kharrion tempt the baron into holding one of the sections of
The Book of Time?
And why break up such a thing of power? Was it truly just to outwit Craugh and the others who pursued him? Or was there another reason that couldn’t yet be seen?
He sighed. One of the frustrations of having a mind trained to think and consider possibilities was that it couldn’t simply be stopped once engaged.
Other books
The Devil's Love by London, Julia
No Regrets by Kate L. Mary
Power of Suggestion by Carolyn Keene
Barely Bewitched by Kimberly Frost
Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
The Bachelor's Bargain by Catherine Palmer
Bride of Pendorric by Victoria Holt
Three Men and a Woman: Annabelle (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Rachel Billings
14 Stories by Stephen Dixon
The Bridgertons Happily Ever After by Julia Quinn
