The Destruction of the Books (21 page)

“I’ve missed you too,” Juhg said, “but I wasn’t the one who chose to stay away.” He couldn’t avoid placing the blame where it lay, though he wished he were a bigger person than that.

“No,” Raisho admitted, looking a little guilty. “No, ye weren’t. Were me. Were the crew too, but they ain’t seen the error of their ways yet.” He paused. “Give ’em a little more time an’ they’ll come around.”

Sitting up, Juhg wrapped his arms around his knees. “They judged me harshly, Raisho. They found me responsible for the deaths of their friends. Of
our
friends.”

“Aye, they did at that. As did I.” Raisho glanced out to sea. “Them men we lost, they were good men. It shouldn’t have happened.”

Silence stretched between them for a moment, fragile and intense, then Juhg broke it. “If I could take it back, I would.”

“An’ if’n ye did, why, then ye wouldn’t have that book what’s the cause of us runnin’ back to Greydawn Moors as we are.”

“That’s something else no one is happy about.”

“Mayhap. But one thing I know, sailors is a lot that likes to gripe. Show me a sailor what ain’t gripin’ about how his lot in life is an’ I’ll show ye a sailor what ain’t givin’ this job his all.” Raisho grinned.

In spite of his despair and anxiety and wariness, Juhg smiled back.

“Ye know what really brought me around to remember that ye ain’t just no Librarian?” Raisho asked. “That ye were also Juhg, me friend?”

Juhg shook his head, not wanting to offend in any way. And he did not have a clue.

“Was Herby,” Raisho declared.

“Herby?”

“Aye. This afternoon I was talkin’ to Herby. He told me about yer book.” Raisho opened his hands and showed Juhg his personal journal.

Juhg felt uncomfortable about Raisho having the journal until he remembered that the young sailor couldn’t read. Then he felt inept because he’d left out all the books, the one they’d found in the goblin ship as well as the copy of it he had so diligently made, in the knapsack he kept his tools in.

“Herby talked about all them stories ye told him about the men who died,” Raisho said. “Heroes, ye made ’em out to be.”

“They were heroes,” Juhg said.

Raisho flipped the thick journal open to some of the latest entries. The lantern light turned the parchment pages golden brown. Ink drawings of the crew embroiled in battle with the goblinkin filled the pages. Other pages held pictures of the dead crewmen as they sat around tables in the galley or did shipboard chores, and even images of the funeral that had taken place aboard
Windchaser.
Some of the pictures were clearer, more detailed than others, but all of them were recognizable.

“I suppose I never have realized what it is ye do with all yer scribblin’,” Raisho admitted. “I’ve seen ye spend hours on end scribblin’ an’ drawin’ in yer book. Now an’ agin, I looked upon them pictures ye drawed, an’ I listened to them stories ye told. I thought ye had a fair hand at drawin’, but I never once put it all together an’ seen what it is ye really do.”

Juhg shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

Raisho sighed with feigned irritation. “Why, ye’re savin’ them men. Turnin’ them into forever heroes is what ye’re doin’.” He hesitated. “See, me an’ the rest of the crew, why, we’ll tell stories about them men. But each time the story gets told, among ourselves an’ even to other people, why, that story will change. In just a short time, them stories about these men an’ what happened aboard
Blowfly
an’ what we lost will be nearly all made up. Nothing will remain of them men the way they really was. But this book—” The young sailor shook the book and the moonslight showed unshed tears in his eyes. “—why, it’s a permanent thing an’ the story in it will never change, never become less or more than them men were. It’ll be a fair an’ accurate accountin’. I know that ’cause I know the way ye are.”

Embarrassed at the sentiment that he heard in Raisho’s words, Juhg had no idea what to say.

“Ye’ve got a fine an’ uncommon gift, bookworm,” Raisho said. “I don’t think I ever appreciated what you do as much before as when I was sittin’ here lookin’ at them pictures an’ seein’ all that scribblin’ by ’em. I’d almost be willin’ to learn to read if’n only to read about them friends we lost.”

“I could teach you.” The words were out of Juhg’s mouth before he knew it. He knew he’d made a mistake. No one outside the Vault of All Known Knowledge and Greydawn Moors was taught to read. The skill was considered too dangerous, considering all the books that were left out in the world. But Juhg didn’t think about that. He’d come from outside Greydawn Moors as well, and the Grandmagister himself had trained him to read and write and think a thing through.

“Mayhap.” Raisho nodded his head. “Mayhap ye will. But fer now, ye just get ye some more rest. Don’t ye be worryin’ about them night haunts nor nothin’ else. I’ll be right here, an’ I’ll protect ye from them.”

Cautiously, still not quite trusting Raisho because of his own past problems, Juhg lay back down. He remained quiet, not wanting to offend his friend, and feigned sleep, intending to be prepared just in case this was a trick and a way to get rid of him. But somewhere in there he went to sleep, and he didn’t rouse again until the sun was warm on his face and someone was yelling, “Land ho!”

10

Greydawn Moors

A curious feeling filled Juhg as he stood in
Windchaser
’s rigging and looked out at the small port city that appeared in the thick fog looming over the Blood-Soaked Sea. The feeling was one that he had never felt before, even when he’d returned from trips with Grandmagister Lamplighter. He felt like he was coming home.

“Well,” Raisho said, “ye’ve got a smile on yer face, ye do.”

“I know.” Juhg clutched the rigging and stood tall as the gentle winds that swept the natural harbor played over him.

Greydawn Moors occupied the northern foothills of the Knucklebones Mountains, the curious ridges that shoved toward the sky at the island’s highest point and looked like the hard knuckles of a closed fist. But that fist was impossibly large, containing caverns and the immense buildings that housed the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Below the Knucklebones ran an almost perpendicular set of ridges called the Ogre’s Fingers which looked disturbingly like a hand closed around the wrist of the fist that made up the Knucklebones. Once that image had settled in, the viewer couldn’t help but think of the mountain range as the hands of two gigantic warriors forever locked in battle, their bodies sunk in the rocky island.

Legend had it that the Old Ones created the island from the bodies of two monsters: an ogre and a champion who had held the ogre off while the island was made by magic. According to those stories, the giants’ toes had dug into the bedrock of the ocean floor and anchored Greydawn Moors when they were turned to stone.

Juhg didn’t know if those legends were true, but what he had learned from the books in the Vault of All Known Knowledge and his travels with the Grandmagister was that every legend and lie had a seed of truth somewhere.

The city occupied the coastal area. For hundreds of years, Greydawn Moors had existed in protective isolation at the edge of the Blood-Soaked Sea. The population had increased only gradually and some speculated that number was also managed by the same magicks that had created the island, hidden it from the rest of the world, and enshrouded the area with perpetual fog.

And filled the Blood-Soaked Sea with monsters,
Juhg thought as he heard one of the massive creatures call out farther out to sea. The monsters were real, but they didn’t linger around the island much.

Three wooden docks ran out to sea, all of them short and compact to handle the infrequent sea traffic. Few merchants made their way to the island to trade, and then only those who had been born on Greydawn Moors and promised the allegiance to the island and to the secret of the Library.

Mostly, the citizens of Greydawn Moors saw to their own needs from the arable lands to the south and east that the farmers tilled. They also took deer and coneys from the woods, but the elven warders given charge of taking care of the island’s needs tended to those numbers.

The populations of the deer and the rabbits were carefully husbanded and parceled out. Only elven warders hunted in and took meat from the forests, and those bounties were traded for meager supplies the elves needed or wanted. All of them had taken vows to protect the island. The few dwarves that worked Greydawn Moors’ two forges to provide needed hardware had taken the same vows and traded under the same circumstances.

Most of the town’s population was made up of dwellers, and from their numbers the Librarians came. The dwellers, though, came with increasing reluctance over the years because being a Librarian was the hardest and most demanding occupation on the island.

Only a few buildings made up the small city. The Customs House to the east, where goods were logged in and out, was the tallest and most impressive. The lighthouse on the craggy finger of land extending out into the harbor was the second tallest. Two bright lanterns spun in the windows, their dwarven gears spun by the incoming and outgoing tide so that captains familiar with the water could tell at a glance whether the tide was rolling in or rolling out.

The market area, at the western end of town with its handful of small permanent structures supplemented by tents of all sizes and colors, spread across the most area.
Windchaser
arrived home early in the morn, so a number of traders were in evidence at the market area, bartering their harvests so they could get back to their fields or shops after the midday meal.

The rest of the buildings in the town proper were mercantiles, taverns, the school where all dwellers were taught the rudiments of reading and writing, and a stable for the horses of a few of the businesses, as well as corrals for the few head of livestock—mostly cows, pigs, and chickens farmers raised—that were sold or traded to the various ships. The animals were purchased and butchered on the spot, then salted and loaded onto the ships in barrels. Occasionally, new livestock were brought onto the island to keep the herds supplied with fresh blood.

Houses sprinkled the foothills leading up from the shore and the town. The homes were mostly dweller shacks, made up of whatever the owners found that came to hand. Pieces of ships that had come back from battles in the Blood-Soaked Sea too battered and broken to be repaired, crates no longer necessary to hold cargo, wood from past buildings that had finally collapsed, and lumber harvested by the elves from the forest made up the houses. They all looked as though a strong breeze might blow them down, but they looked bright nonetheless because dwellers tended to favor bright colors and the dwarves made paints of all hues. Oddments and other items that other people might call junk became treasures that the dwellers used to accessorize their homes.

In sharp contrast, the dwarven homes were neat and tidy, with sharp corners and straight walls. White fences, which dwarves claimed made good neighbors of dwellers because they didn’t feel so inclined to take something they saw because they were certain the dwarves living there didn’t truly appreciate enough that item’s worth, defined yards and gardens that were carefully tended. The elves made their homes in the trees and farther up into the Knucklebones.

The humans on the island, their numbers much fewer because there weren’t as many of them and the fact that humans by their very natures were wanderers, lived wherever they chose. Most of the humans were sailors and fishermen, always pitting their skills against the wind and the sea. And every so often, as if their lives weren’t short and fleeting enough, those humans gathered into a monster-hunting party and went after one of the great beasts that resided in the Blood-Soaked Sea. To keep the numbers of the monsters in check, they claimed, but Juhg had the distinct feeling that they mainly just wanted to see if it could be done, then if it could be done again.

The Barrel of Ale tavern, which was a human establishment, boasted the head of one of the monsters that dwelt out in the Blood-Soaked Sea. On those rare occasions that the monster hunters returned with a prize, the Barrel of Ale served up monster steaks. Juhg, for the life of him, didn’t know why anyone would want to eat anything as repulsive—and possibly as
poisonous
—as one of those forbidding creatures.

But that was Greydawn Moors, lost in time and in place to the mainland, and it was truly the only safe place Juhg had ever known.

The wind blew out of the south, snapping across the Knucklebones, then plunging to fall over the forested lowlands. Juhg stared into the teeth of the wind and felt the chill that often lingered in the mornings. The cold came from the sea, and there was never a time in Greydawn Moors when people went long without their cloaks.

Having grown up in the South on the mainland, where goblins tended to congregate the most, Juhg longed for the warmer climes that he remembered. The chill, not actually an uncomfortable cold, was a constant reminder that he was not a native to the area.

Even after twenty years of living among the people of Greydawn Moors, he still felt like an outsider. The citizens’ fear of outsiders seemed almost bred into them. But not an elven, dwarven, human, or dweller child who grew up on the island didn’t know the horrifying tales of Lord Kharrion and the goblinkin that had almost destroyed the world.

The island people knew the ships’ captains and crews that came to trade there, and nearly all of them were born of the island. Very few outsiders were allowed into the ships’ crews. No outside traders were allowed into Greydawn Moors.

Strangers in town meant the worst kind of danger. If the wrong person shipped aboard with a crew that sailed to Greydawn Moors, then went back to the mainland and told of the existence of the island and the Vault of All Known Knowledge, all the work that the warriors who had stood against Lord Kharrion and the goblin hordes would be undone. The goblins would brave the Blood-Soaked Sea to find the island and not be afraid of sailing over the edge of the world as they generally were.