The Destruction of the Books (13 page)

The idea of books languishing so long they’d given up and departed the mortal coil pained Juhg. During their travels, he and Grandmagister Lamplighter had occasionally found small, personal libraries that had decayed and been forever lost.

“Because books give us our ties to the past,” Juhg said. “They help us rebuild the world that once was.”

“An’ that world will never be again,” Navin argued. “So what’s the use of that?”

“They help us to better understand who we are now,” Juhg went on. “They tell us how to do things, arts and sciences that were lost during the bloody years of Lord Kharrion’s war.”

“Men learn what they need to learn,” Navin said. “That’s the way it’s always been.”

“It takes time to learn,” Juhg said, striving to make himself understood. “That’s why books are written. To carry on information others have already spent their time to learn. Animal husbandry. Gardening. Even sailing and building ships.”

Navin shook his head. “Ain’t never need to know nothin’ me da didn’t teach me. Was I to need somethin’ past that, I learned from those around me. Ye want knowledge? If it’s somethin’ worth knowin’, why, most folks already know it. All that other stuff ye’re talkin’ about, why, it ain’t worth the time it takes to read nor write.”

“Navin,” Captain Attikus admonished, evidently fearing the first mate had gone too far.

The man’s attitude aggravated Juhg. So many of the inhabitants of Greydawn Moors felt as Navin did, that the Library and all its Librarians were a waste of time and resources better spent elsewhere. Even Grandmagister Lamplighter’s father hadn’t wanted him to work at the Vault of All Known Knowledge.

“It’s all right, Captain,” Juhg said. His eyes never left Navin’s. Although dwellers as a race tended to be meek and mild, he knew the melancholy and anger at the events that had shaped his life marked him differently. That was what had finally driven him from the Library and from Greydawn Moors: No matter how hard he had tried, he had never quite fit in.

Navin looked a bit triumphant. He smugly folded his arms across his chest.

“Do you remember the sickness that ran through Greydawn Moors last year?” Juhg asked.

“Aye. Me sister’s snot-nosed brats came down with the fevers an’ them chilblains.”

The sickness had reached near epidemic numbers on the island last spring. Grandmagister Lamplighter had traced its cause back to one of the pirate ships that had come in unknowing with the sickness.

“Do you know who found the cure to the sickness?” Juhg asked.

“The apothecary,” Navin answered. “Was him what fixed up the herbs an’ such that fixed everybody up.”

“It weren’t the apothecary,” Lucius stated with a quiet grin. “Mayhap he made up the herbs, but ’twas the Librarians what told him how it was to be done.”

“That’s right,” Juhg said. “When the sickness broke out through the port area and climbed up into the foothills of the Knucklebones Mountains where many outlying homes are, it was the Librarians who searched for an answer to the sickness in those books that you’re so ready to shovel out with the barn muck.”

“That sickness had never been seen on the island,” Raisho said. “Like as not, everybody in Greydawn Moors might well have died from it had the Librarians not found the cure.”

Navin scowled. “There’s still a powerful lot of nonsense that the Librarians take pride in that ain’t needed.”

“Not in your life,” Juhg replied. “But in the lives of others?” He shook his head. “That’s not for a Librarian to say. A Librarian serves best by making sure the information is kept up with.”

Navin blew out his breath. “All right, then. It wasn’t like we had any real choice about fetchin’ that blamed book. I just hope it’s worth the trouble, is all.”

So do I,
Juhg thought.

“Since we’re all in agreement now,” Captain Attikus rumbled dryly, making it clear that no chance had existed of the situation going any other way, “this is how we’ll do it.” He tapped the map. “When that goblinkin ship rounds Iron Rose Island, the southeasternmost of the lot, and if it’s morning when they do, we can get onto them quick. Coming out of the morning sun as we’ll be, they won’t see us until we’re right on top of them.” He paused, staring at the map, then lifting his eyes to the men around him. “That should give us all the edge we’ll need to take that ship.”

Even with the edge, though, Juhg knew men were going to die in the attempt.

“Raisho,” Captain Attikus said, “I know you’re probably wondering why I asked you here.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

For that matter,
Juhg thought,
so am I.
The fact that the captain would have a war council before taking up the pursuit of
Blowfly
was no surprise. Captain Attikus was a thorough man.

“I’m thinking,” Captain Attikus said, “that mayhap those goblinkin, or at least the wizard, might suspect we’re after the book. More than likely, the book is the only thing of worth on the whole vessel.” He glanced at Raisho. “All the tales of gold and riches notwithstanding.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Raisho apologized. “Tellin’ of all that made for a good tale, though.”

“I’m sure it did, Raisho, and there will be no few who will be disappointed—”

“Or downright mad,” Navin put in, then glanced hurriedly at Captain Attikus. “Beggin’ the cap’n’s indulgence for speakin’ so out of turn.”

Attikus nodded. “You’ll have to make amends for your stories, Raisho.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Raisho stated glumly.

Juhg knew that no young human ever liked to have to go back and change a story once told that brought glory and interest to him. And the tale of the trip they’d made aboard
Blowfly
last night had delivered a considerable amount of both to him.

“Of course,” Captain Attikus said, “it’s possible that the goblinkin vessel spent or gambled away all their riches. Or were even serving the wizard to pay off a huge debt or buy an ensorcelled object.” He didn’t look at the young sailor.

A canny look fitted itself to Raisho’s face. He gave a slight nod, but said nothing.

“In the meantime, Raisho,” Captain Attikus said, “it may well be that we can’t take the goblinkin ship without sinking her. Besides the damage we’ll undoubtedly inflict while taking her, she appears none too steady anyway. I’m certain the fire damage from last night did her no good.”

A cold apprehension suddenly started across Juhg’s shoulders as he realized where Captain Attikus was headed.

“Librarian Juhg,” the captain stated, “I’ll have to ask you to be part of the boarding party.”

“Me, Captain?” Juhg couldn’t believe it. “But—but I’m no warrior.” He’d fought in the past, when he’d had to and where he’d had to, but never because he’d
wanted
to.

“It may be that we don’t have the book from the goblinkin ship at the time she goes down,” the captain explained. “You’ll go aboard and seek to find the book, should time grow short once we’ve started boarding the enemy vessel.”

“Me, Captain?”

“You,” Captain Attikus stated emphatically. “I’m sure that your Grandmagister would demand no less of you.”

No, Juhg was certain of that as well. Grandmagister Lamplighter had often risked his life in pursuit of books that had avoided collection during the Cataclysm.

“Raisho,” the captain went on, “you’ll be personally responsible for Librarian Juhg, should he have to take on the mantle of a hero to go after that book.”

“Beggin’ the cap’n’s pardon,” Raisho said, “there’s any number of men what’s able to nursemaid—to
look after
the bookworm. Ye need me up front, Cap’n. Where all the fightin’ is. That’s when I’ll be at me best.”

“You’re a capable man, Raisho, despite your youth and your arrogance. And you’re friends with the Librarian. I know you won’t be tempted to leave him to his own devices in the heat of the moment.” Captain Attikus placed his hands together behind him. “This is going to be done as I wish it to be done, gentlemen. That’s all there is to be said about the matter.” He looked around the room. “If there are any more questions…?”

There were none, though Juhg firmly wanted to lodge a protest. Raisho would be busy enough taking care of himself without spreading his defenses thin to protect another person who didn’t belong on the front line of a boarding party anyway.

*   *   *

Midmorn streaked the horizon a day and a half later. The stabbing fingers of the newly rising sun didn’t make much headway against the storm front moving in from the east across the Frozen Ocean. Whirling clouds fought for space in the dark sky, looking like black roses blossoming time and time again against a field of black velvet.

Juhg sat in
Windchaser
’s crow’s-nest, sharing space with Ornne, the young sailor whose eyes were sharp as spyglasses. Ornne was gangly and short, all arms and legs and a head that looked much too big for him. Next to Ornne, Juhg had the best eyes among the crew.

Nervously, Juhg scanned the eastern horizon. Pushed by the storm coming in to land, the dirty slate-gray waves rolled tall and white-capped. Spotting sails, especially
Blowfly
’s soot-streaked sails, would prove hard against the dingy sky and ocean almost the same color. Occasionally, jagged rips of lightning burned across the sky, and the crack of thunder—loud as a blacksmith’s hammer while working old iron—rolled over the ship.

The crew stood ready on
Windchaser
’s deck. They were clad in leather armor that barely offered any protection for the head and chest. Heavier armor couldn’t be worn: If they lost their footing and fell from the ship during the planned boarding, they’d sink like stones and the crew wouldn’t be able to pull them back aboard. Many of the crew didn’t know how to swim.

The storm presented an ill omen, and sailors had always believed in omens more than anything else.

Windchaser
rested uneasily at anchor as if shying away from the forbidding chunk of rock that stood against the storm’s fury. When he’d first seen Iron Rose Island during the night, Juhg was convinced that it was as desolate as the others he’d had a chance to observe as the ship sailed between the Tattered Islands and the mainland.

But even in the false early morning light presented by the storm, he knew that wasn’t right. A city had once existed on the island. All that remained of that city now were remnants of buildings that stood close to the ground—where they stood at all.

When first constructed, the buildings had resembled black roses. Iron framework held the lines of nearly all the buildings and even the modest houses. The exterior of those structures consisted of black slabs of rock cut like rose petals. Where the iron framework showed bereft of stone, the design stood out in bold relief.

Once, Juhg knew, the city filled the foothills of Iron Rose Island with beauty. He wished that there was time to go ashore and study the architecture and the grounds more thoroughly, but the captain had forbidden that. However, the ululating wails that came from the island caused no little apprehension and probably would have held Juhg from making such a landing on the beach anyway.

Navin and a few of the other sailors who had stood watch on deck and listened to the wails insisted the Stalkers made them. No one on watch saw anything in the water or on land all through the night, but the men who talked so long and so loud of the Stalkers insisted that the creatures lived in underwater pockets along the shore. The living arrangements, if they were true, reminded Juhg of crayfish, and he couldn’t help picturing the Stalkers as that. With his imaginative eye, he saw the Stalkers as human-sized crayfish with skull-like features and dead-white flesh. But hands had shaped the iron frameworks and black stone slabs, not pincers.

The sailors also held forth that only blood in the water would make the Stalkers leave their desolate island. Like sharks, the Stalkers were supposed to be able to smell the blood in the water for miles. Juhg desperately hoped that weren’t true.

Ornne shifted beside Juhg, catching his arm in his hand and tugging to get his attention.

Following the boy’s line of sight, Juhg spotted the soot-streaked sails standing proudly aboard the ship that rounded the southeastern tip of Iron Rose Island.

“Do ye see the ship?” Ornne asked in a quick, nervous voice.

“I do,” Juhg agreed. “It’s there.” Fear took a proper hold of him then, stronger than anything he’d felt through the night.

Ornne lifted his voice, shouting, “Sails! Sails ho, lads!” and
Windchaser
became a bustle of activity as she prepared for war.

7

“Boarders Away!”

“Battle stations!” Captain Attikus roared from the stern deck. He stood solid and unbending, a force now rather than a man, and Juhg knew when the time came to write of this battle—provided he lived through it, of course—then he would describe the man as that. “Raise the sails! Fill those ’yards with canvas!”

Navin repeated the captain’s orders, bellowing them out in his stentorian voice and adding colorful threats to individual crewmembers as he strode amidships with a cutlass in his hands. Gust trailed along through the rigging above the first mate’s head. The monk shook his gnarled hand threateningly, in an exact mimicry of Navin’s efforts.

Instantly, the ship’s crew pulled the ropes that raised the canvas and stretched it tight between the halyards along all three masts. Luck stayed with them in spite of the inclement weather: Most of the wind drove from the east, spitting rain toward the west so that the ship could run full-out toward the goblin vessel.

As the wind caught the rising canvas and pressed it out full-bellied,
Windchaser
surged forward, straining at her anchor. The prow nosed down and the stern threatened to come about as she twisted to be free.

“Haul that anchor!” Navin crossed the deck at a full run and oversaw the crewmen winding the great wheel that drew up the heavy anchor. Timbers creaked, splintering the noise of the canvas cracking in the wind, and whitecaps retreating from the mainland hammered the ship’s stern so hard that the ship shuddered.