The Chosen (The Compendium of Raath, Book 1) (20 page)

“Perhaps. Goodnight, Domma. My advice is to
follow your heart.” Metta's eyes closed, but Domma doubted the girl
would sleep much.

Sometimes the curse of
Devotion was empathizing with the struggles of everyone around you.
I
know the ins and outs of so many
people's lives; their dark desires, their failings, their fears.
But I barely know myself.

Domma quietly closed Metta's door and made
her way to the Bibliofero.

T
he Bibliofero was deep beneath the earth, down a set of large
steps at the back of the Sunburst Temple. There was some
speculation as to how it had ever been built at all. It was a
commonly held belief that the Temple had been built over it the
already existing magical underground library. Some, however – Domma
included – believed that it was done during the religious wars that
had happened five hundred years ago; perhaps as a hiding place,
perhaps as a bastion of knowledge. According to the histories,
magic had surged during those times, making the construction of
such a place not out of the realm of possibility.

But whatever the reason for its existence,
the Bibliofero housed the largest collection of knowledge currently
available anywhere that Domma knew of.

And only a Devotee could access it.

The stone door that granted entry must have
weighed a thousand stone at least, not to mention the endless
columns that stood supporting the place. The architecture was
brutally heavy, but there wasn't a crack in any of the stone, even
after all these centuries.

Domma stood in front of the stone door now
with the same candle she had used in Metta's room. It was about
halfway gone, the wax melting down the sides, but Domma was pressed
forward by her thirst to solve the puzzle and hadn't bothered to
pick up a new one. She held her hand to the door and began to
Delve.

The technique was fairly simple, but the
door had always prompted a question in Domma's mind. Why could she
Delve an inanimate object? What living, thinking thing could be
housed inside of the door that was reacting to the magic?

It had better not be filled
with brains,
she thought.

It was true that many techniques had been
lost over the years. Devotee magic and the other four types had
waxed and waned, powers and techniques gained and lost. The past
might have held millions of ways of using her power, but as of
right now she had knowledge of three.

Finally she found the door's mind and
twisted until it gave way, sliding by unseen force. It made almost
no sound as it traveled slowly inward, revealing a single room that
was as big as the entire Sunburst Temple.

Claustrophobia was rare in such a large
place, but Domma felt it here in the vast silence.

There was no light in the main room, and no
sound either. No odor emanated. Domma and many of the Devotees had
trouble breathing down here, making the time they could spend
sometimes rather limited. Even the candle had trouble holding its
flame.

Domma looked at Metta's list. The girl had
said the books were likely in the Depths, so Domma cupped her
candle's flame and began moving towards the shadows at the far end
of the Bibliofero.

She passed shelf upon shelf that held books
of all sizes, colors, and conditions. Some were, in fact, totally
useless, the ink completely worn off or the pages fallen out, but
still they were kept, because once a text went into the Bibliofero
it didn't come back out. The magic made sure of that.

It was odd to think of such a vast resource
seeing such little use, but this place wasn't spoken of outside of
the Temple. The main problem - even for those that knew how to
access the Bibliofero - was that there was no real method of
organization. A collection of this size required upkeep that the
Devotees simply didn't have the time or numbers to deal with and it
had, as far as Domma knew, always been a disaster.

There had been sisters through the ages that
had cared for it, but not nearly as well as they should have. Their
system seemed to have very few rules. They shelved and organized by
what they felt to be relevant, putting the more usable tomes on the
closest shelves at eye level, and everything else progressively
farther back until they were in the Depths.

Domma found herself there now. There were no
cobwebs as one might expect in the back of giant library. Nothing
lived down here.

Her candle burned almost too dimly for her
to see, but she began to extract books from the shelves very
carefully. She turned the first one over, trying to find a title,
but couldn't see one. She sat down on the ground and opened it. The
script inside was written in a language that Domma couldn't
translate, so she decided to place it back on the shelf and take
another. On and on she worked, becoming increasingly frustrated
that nothing she picked seemed relevant. It was impossible to find
the books Metta had written down. There were thousands upon
thousands of unrecognizable volumes.

An entire bell had passed and still Domma
had found nothing.

“God,” she prayed in the darkness, “please
guide my hand. Help me find what I am looking for.” She expended
the tiniest bit of power to send the words with more force, and
with her next choice she thought she felt her hand being pushed
gently in the proper direction.

She selected a blue tome with gold edging on
it and ran her hand over the cover. She opened the book, her candle
a mere stub at this point. The text inside was in a large, hastily
scrawled, uneven script and the lines were not quite straight. The
ink was faded and Domma squinted as she read. The language was of
the ancient south, but she could translate most of it and so she
began to read, becoming more and more enthralled as she did:

My name is unimportant and
my journey has been long, and made longer still by my wounds. But
the creature that attacked me had certainly been neither human nor
animal. I was wandering near the misty barrier that separates our
world from . . . from what, I am not sure. I have never heard of
anyone entering it and coming back alive. Perhaps God wants to keep
us from knowing, or perhaps the world simply ends there, fading
into mist for eternity.

It makes little difference either way, for
leaping from the misty area came a creature of hideous design. The
claws of a crab, elongated and dripping with toxin, tipped its
arms. The rest of it resembled no creature that I have encountered
and I therefore find it difficult to describe here, especially
since writing is so painful.

It screeched at me in a
foreign tongue - if one could even call it a tongue - and quite
before I knew it I was under assault. I tried to
(a word that Domma did not recognize)
it, but it was to no effect as it ran towards me.
It swung at my leg as I dodged away, calling for peace. Of course
you must know that it did not listen to my plea. I begged it to
return to the mist as I backed away, asking forgiveness for
disturbing it as I must have done. To no avail.

I drew my
(probably some kind of a sword)
as it lunged at me again and the metal made a
harsh sound against its
(skin?)
but accomplished nothing. It was only when I fell
backwards, rolling down a hill, that I ceased to be under attack. I
may have fractured my skull and hand in the fall, but I got up
nonetheless, stumbling blindly through the daylight for some
escape.

I ran until I thought I
would burst. It was ninety
(some measure
of distance)
to the nearest town, and when
I got there they assumed me drunk. Leave it to the citizens of
Youskirk to think the worst of a man. I was ridiculed for what I
told them I had seen; after all, the people of that town had lived
there their whole lives and I was a stranger to them. I must have
looked awful.

I began my journey north to inform people
who might listen to me. I had seen something frightening in the
mist, and I was sure it was coming for us all. I got to the
northernmost town in the Southern Kingdom - that of Fisher, where
the Ein river forks - and finally I was taken seriously. For a
time.

When a man is different from others he can
only conceal it for so long. I stayed at Fisher for weeks,
gathering supporters who would rally with me, but one of the men
who joined to my cause knew me, though I did not know him. He must
have hunted me, is my only guess. He knew my past better than most
and slowly the rumors about me began to spread.

I'd had the power inside of me my whole
life. Like the five. The ones that caused this mess. I could use my
power in various ways and it seemed to grow through prayer to the
God of the North. When I was on my pilgrimage to the Southern
Kingdom, my power had ebbed and flowed as if it was interrupted by
some other forces, but still it remained within me.

Some called me a wizard, others a liar, but
my infamy – word of my uniqueness: the first of my kind since the
mist came – spread like wildfire. As I write these words I am
certain that the whole world will be sorry they weren't able to
heed my warnings.

I am writing this in the vain hope that
someday, someone will see this document. It has taken me three
years – all of them spent in this jail of an infirmary - to get the
quill and paper necessary to write down even this small portion of
my plight. My caretaker is gentle. Perhaps if my writing is not
seen as a warning, it would be alright if it were seen as a joke.
At the very least it must be seen.

-1570 A.C.

Domma's candle guttered as her eyes swept
over the last of the words. There was more in this tome, but she
would not be able to read it this night. As the flame died she was
left in utter darkness to ponder what she had just absorbed.

There was a lot lurking in this text. She
was certain it had been recopied; the condition it was in was too
good for anything else. The text was supposedly over three-hundred
years old. Had this been the first recorded sighting of a Foglin?
Had the creatures not existed until then?

Domma stood up quietly and felt her way
along the shelves until she reached the giant stone door. She had
never much been afraid of the dark, but the Bibliofero had a
strange way of getting to one's sense of calm. By the time she
unlocked the door, her knees were shaking.

Taking the book with her was out of the
question, as the Bibliofero's magical workings disallowed this sort
of thing. She remembered it fresh, as easily as she could memorize
passages from The Book, or an entire sermon.

She made her way back up the twisting stairs
towards the dim light of the Temple's main floor all the while
going over what she had just read. She was certain that God had
helped her find what she was looking for, and he was trying to tell
her something, but meanings were often hidden in layers. She would
have to puzzle this out herself.

She went back to her room and sat down to
think.

T
he thing that tugged at the back of her mind was a
contradiction in the writing. The narrator had been under attack,
but then he fell, tumbling down a hill and somehow that had saved
him. He seemed to say that with a fractured skull and hip he was
able to escape where he otherwise would not have been able to. It
didn't make any sense. His injuries should have hindered him,
rather than saved him.

Movement should have been difficult on his
broken hip and thought should have slowed . . .

With his broken skull.

Something with
skulls.

The section missing from Ormon's skull had
been the place where Domma had Mended him.

The Foglin was after the
magic.

The narrator of the story had said people
were frightened of his power. Once he hurt his head, the Foglin
ceased its pursuit.

He'd damaged his head, a
source of his power?

Do Foglins feed on
magic?

Magic was as scarce a thing as Domma knew
of. Out of all the Sunburst Clerics of Haroma – of which there were
easily ninety – only five of them were Devotees, herself and Metta
included.

And three of them had developed their powers
within the last year.

Is the rise of magic
drawing the Foglins farther north?

Something wasn't adding up here, and Domma
couldn't be sure that she wasn't just confusing herself. She
resigned to think more about this tomorrow and then she lay down
slowly and went to sleep.

K
rothair was sitting on the ground tending to his wounds. His
lip was split in two different places and he could have sworn one
of his pinkies was broken. As he rested his back against the harsh
bark of an old tree, he cursed silently. If he hadn't been learning
he would have left weeks ago.

But the things Ti'Shed was showing him, even
if they were delivered in insulting, abusive ways, challenged his
mind and body in a most satisfying way. Techniques of sword forms,
two-weapon fighting, unarmed combat, rope grappling, and other
things he had never even thought of before all mingled in his mind,
fighting for space and understanding.

Krothair realized the delicate balance
within himself; the fight between his thirst for knowledge and his
tolerance of pain and emotional torment. He had been worried about
Ti'Shed for these past few weeks: worried that the sword master
would hurt him and worried that he would hurt himself. Krothair
didn't want to disappoint, but it seemed that no matter what he did
or how hard he tried, Ti'Shed saw him only as a failure.