The Destruction of the Books (12 page)

“No.” Raisho showed him a white mirthless grin. “Them goblins, why, they ain’t gettin’ away with nothin’, bookworm. Cap’n Attikus, he’s givin’ ’em a lead, is all. Lettin’ ’em build their confidence afore he takes it all away.
’Chaser,
she can cleave through the water faster’n that dirty pig ever thought of sailin’.” He glanced up at the sun and squinted. “Won’t be much longer afore we take off after her.”

“We’re going after
Blowfly
?” The possibility spun crazily in Juhg’s mind. He’d been part of ship-to-ship fighting in the past, seeing decks that ran red with blood and hearing the constant ring of steel against steel and screaming men’s voices, but years had passed since then. It was not an experience he was looking forward to repeating.

“Aye. We are. An’ we’ll catch her, right soon enough.”

“What about the wizard?”

“Wizards ain’t nothin’ but men.” Raisho spat into the water. “Some of ’em take a little more killin’ than others, but they die.” He winked at Juhg. “An’ if’n they wasn’t afeared of dyin’, why, they’d stay in the thick of things instead of hidin’ themselves away in castles an’ big houses an’ caves an’ islands an’ the like. No, them evil wizards don’t live among most folks ’cause they’s afeard of gettin’ a knife ’twixt their shoulder blades when they ain’t lookin’. Keeps ’em honest in town. To an extent.”

Uneasiness bounced in thick, greasy globs in Juhg’s stomach and made him feel sick. He was certain they’d barely escaped with their lives last night, and Raisho’s overly confident manner made him fearful for his friend. Confronting a wizard was never a good thing.

6

Pursuit

Near dusk, when
Blowfly
was at least half a day out to sea, Captain Attikus called a meeting in his cabin. His quartermaster, a quiet man of middle years named Lucius, and first mate, Navin, who was only a few years older than Raisho and was normally boisterous and outgoing, joined the captain.

Juhg and Raisho also stood in attendance.

The captain’s mood was somber. “We’ll weigh anchor and ride the eventide out to sea in just a bit. Make sure the men are fed proper and bundled up when they’re about the deck. I want them looking sharp as can be.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Lucius said, and Navin echoed him.

Captain Attikus glanced at his mate. “Navin, you’ll take first shift. Keep the men on short watches. Rotate them so they stay rested and ready.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Navin replied. His hand fiddled idly with the cutlass he wore at his side. The scars he bore on his face spoke of past battles, but they didn’t say whether he had won them or lost them.

“And remind them that hard tasks, like taking that goblin ship soon, are part of what they signed on to do when they took ship’s articles.”

“I will, Cap’n,” Navin declared. “But I won’t be havin’ to remind them much. This ship, Cap’n? Why, we’ve been bloody before, an’ we know we’ll be bloody again. You look around durin’ a boardin’, you won’t find a man in this crew what’s takin’ a lackluster step.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Navin,” the captain said in a gruff voice. “And tell the men that I’m proud of them.”

Juhg looked at each man in turn, studying them so that he could easily sketch the scene in his journal when time permitted.
How can they so easily talk of possibly going to their deaths?

Even after reading treatises and biographies of warcraft and battles, Juhg struggled to comprehend what drove warriors, humans most of all, to seek out violent confrontations. The goblinkin were an easy study. Those foul creatures knew no other way of life, even among their own kind.

“Lucius, you’ll take the men after first watch,” Captain Attikus went on. He reached into a hidden compartment in the wall behind his desk and took out a sealskin container. Reaching into the container, he took out maps of the area. Only sailors who sailed the seas to protect Greydawn Moors and the Vault of All Known Knowledge had maps.

(During his tenure at the Library, Juhg had drawn maps. Grandmagister Lamplighter insisted that every Librarian know cartography well.)

Captain Attikus checked through the maps, then unfurled one across the desk. The paper was thick and limber as cloth, specially prepared down in the bowels of the Vault of All Known Knowledge, and held inks in the same color and same thickness as the day they were applied. The formula for making the paper had come from the books in the Library, one of the first things rescued from the higgledy-piggledy mess left by the armies that had delivered the books by the wagonload and shipload.

Lucius reached for the small lantern and raised it over their heads so the light might better strike the map.

“For now, we’ll assume
Blowfly
made for south,” Captain Attikus said. “If after two days’ sailing we haven’t caught up with the goblin ship, we’ll turn back north.”

“Ain’t much in the way of north,” Lucius commented. “Just colder an’ more miserable. Can’t see them botherin’ to head up that way.”

“Agreed.” Captain Attikus studied the map. “But we still don’t know what
Blowfly
and her captain are doing in these waters.”

“Or the wizard.” Only when the other men looked at him did Juhg realize he’d spoken aloud. Embarrassment flamed his cheeks.

“I haven’t forgotten about the wizard, Librarian Juhg,” the captain said, gazing at him levelly. “If getting that book wasn’t impressed as important to me by my standing orders, I wouldn’t hasten to chase a wizard. I don’t much care for magic, and I’ve yet to find a seafaring man who does.”

“This wizard’s weak,” Raisho said. “He only had the one fireball in him last night.”

Captain Attikus shifted his attention to the young sailor and waited a beat before speaking. “Aye, Raisho, but I also see that one fireball was responsible for a lost ship this morning. I don’t mean for my ship to be counted as the next. And you don’t know if a fireball spell is the only thing that wizard is capable of.”

Raisho gave the captain a curt nod.

“I’ve studied the map and I know these waters,” the captain continued, glancing back at the parchment lying across the desk before them. “Goblinkin don’t trust sailing as a general rule and have only learned what they have of it for the plunder they can take.” He traced a finger along the coast of the mainland.

Juhg followed the captain’s directions. Much of the map Juhg already knew from his own journal he’d prepared for his journey back to the mainland.

“The goblinkin will hug the coast, never wanting to be far from it.” Captain Attikus’ finger stopped at a cluster of islands only a short distance from the coastline. “
’Chaser
’s fast enough to outrun them. We’ll hug the coastline, too, and beat them to the Tattered Islands.”

Juhg’s heart took a dive. He knew about the Tattered Islands and all the evil that was supposed to cling to them.

“The Tattered Islands,” Navin repeated with a small nervous quaver in his voice. “That’s a dangerous place, Cap’n. Full of jagged rocks an’ coral reefs.”

“I know,” Captain Attikus agreed. “Most captains swing out wide of the Tattered Islands, following along them rather than the mainland to avoid those rocks and those reefs. There are plenty of ships that lost their bottoms there and went down. I’m guessing that
Blowfly
’s captain will do no differently.” He studied the map. “We’re going to sail through the Tattered Islands.”

“Cap’n,” Navin protested. “Them reefs an’ them rocks, why, that ain’t all they say is in them waters there. I’ve heard any number of stories about the stalkers that—”

Horrid illustrations, all fangs and blood and curved talons, filled Juhg’s mind from the books he’d read while in the Vault. The Tattered Islands had existed before the Cataclysm, a place of some unknown doom that had been forever changed and forever cursed. A number of volumes in Hralbomm’s Wing recounted at length the adventures of hapless heroes and dastardly villains who spent their last breaths upon those broken shoals.

Captain Attikus interrupted Navin, cutting in with a tone that brooked no argument. “I’m sure you’ve also heard stories about the endless piles of pirates’ loot that decorate the coasts of those islands.”

“Aye, an’ I have,” Navin replied. “An’ I’ve never once hoped to go a-huntin’ there, Cap’n. Them islands, why, they’re a fearful place. I’ve talked with ship’s mates what’s been near to them an’ they’ve had plenty to say about all the wailin’ fer a man’s blood what goes on there.”

The captain held up a hand. “I’ve been through the Tattered Islands. Seafarers from Greydawn Moors have marked passages through there. I’ve used those islands as hiding places before—and I’ve endured more than enough of the superstitious twaddle about undead things living there—to elude pirates with more ships than I could fight.”

Juhg could tell by Lucius and Navin’s reactions that the men clearly were not happy with the captain’s choice of action.

“We’ll sail on through to the other side of the islands,” Captain Attikus stated. “I’m guessing two days will put us there ahead of
Blowfly
. If our luck holds, they’ll cross those waters early in the morning and we’ll catch sight of them.” He tapped the map at the outermost island’s edge. “There’s anchorage here on Jakker’s Hold where fresh water can be taken on. We’ll stop there when we’ve finished our business with the goblinkin, then—once we have the book—head back to the Blood-Soaked Sea and Greydawn Moors.”

“Return to Greydawn Moors so soon?” Navin shook his head. “We only just got shut of the place, Cap’n. There’s profits to be made from the investments the crew has made in the cargo we’re carryin’. Some of it’s perishable. You’re askin’ them men to take a loss against their good faith.”

Juhg knew the first mate was more concerned about his own investments. Navin tended to be a gambler of the first order, always seeking the highest profits to be made.

“You men who came aboard my ship,” Captain Attikus spoke levelly, “took an oath to first defend Greydawn Moors and the hiding place of the Vault of All Known Knowledge across the Blood-Soaked Sea.”

Navin had trouble meeting the captain’s penetrating gaze. “Aye, Cap’n. That we did.”

“Then I’m going to hold you to that.”

Navin’s jaw firmed. He clearly didn’t like how things were going, but he knew his place. “Aye, Cap’n. I was just thinkin’ that maybe that book—” The mate said the word like it was a curse, a thing to be despised. “—might could wait awhile. Till we finish the journey we’ve planned. To go a-chargin’ back across the Blood-Soaked Sea like that, why, we’re like to call attention to ourselves, we are. An’ ye know we shouldn’t have none of that.”

Captain Attikus raised his eyes to meet Juhg’s. “Explain it to him, Librarian Juhg.”

Feeling a little embarrassed, and a little challenged because few people of any race outside those that lived on Greydawn Moors truly understood the significance of books, Juhg said, “If the goblinkin haven’t destroyed that book by now, and it’s in the care of a wizard, it has to be an important book.”

“Ye saw the book,” Navin accused. “Don’t ye know if’n it’s important or not?”

“The book’s important,” Raisho growled. “If’n it wasn’t, the wizard would never have wasted an enchantment to protect it.”

“Ye don’t even know if they still have the book. Fer all ye know, that goblinkin captain mighta traded it back in Kelloch’s Harbor.”

“They did their pirate trading with the cooper that young Herby told us of,” Captain Attikus said. “A cooper would have no use for a book.”

“Then why bring it all this way?” Navin persisted. “Don’t make no sense, is what I’m sayin’.”

“The book belongs to the wizard,” Raisho replied. “Them goblins talkin’ about the book, why, them creatures was just talkin’.”

Navin thrust his whiskered jaw out defiantly. “Then how did the cooper know the book was on the goblin ship?”

Juhg had to admit the man was clearheaded enough to point out that discrepancy in the story. How did the cooper know the book was coming into port? Juhg hadn’t thought up an answer that satisfied him yet.

“Mayhap we could go back an’ ask the cooper,” Raisho growled. “
After
we finish this bit of business.”

Navin sighed and shook his head. “We’re gonna be spillin’ blood, that’s all I’m sayin’. Our own, as well as that of them goblinkin. I just gotta know how many men’s lives a book is worth.”

Anger ignited within Juhg. How many times had he ventured into dangerous and inhospitable lands with Grandmagister Lamplighter to retrieve a book from ruins or some other hidden place? How many times had they gone just to investigate a rumor that had been carried by the friendly pirates working the Blood-Soaked Sea? He didn’t know. But men, elves, and dwarves had died in those efforts.

“The worth,” Juhg declared in a much stronger voice than he’d intended, “depends on the book.”

Navin looked up at him. Surprise gleamed in his eyes.

Juhg suddenly felt nervous and he almost stopped speaking, but his anger was upon him and the silence between the humans watching him drew the words out. “We don’t know what a book’s worth until we read it. Even then, that worth might be a long time in coming.” He fidgeted, feeling so small with the four of them looking down on him. “So many people think the Librarians hoard information they glean from the books they read. Shopkeepers even along the Yondering Docks in Greydawn Moors talk with each other about fabulous fortunes the Librarians know about because of their studies.”

Windchaser
heeled over a little bit as the crew worked the sails topside and she caught a crossways breeze.

“Once,” Juhg went on, “an attempt was made to kidnap Grandmagister Lamplighter when he was still a First Level Librarian. They wanted him to find the Lost Tower of Jeludace, where, rumor had it, a king’s fortune awaited discovery.”

“I heard about that,” Lucius said. “The Grandmagister barely escaped with his life.”

Juhg nodded. “There was no fortune waiting to be won. But there were books.”

“Then what’s the use of ’em?” Navin demanded. “They’ve laid there for years, some of ’em rotted.”