The Destruction of the Books (25 page)

“As I’ve told you before,” Carason grumbled, “I’m not an innkeeper. I’m a chef.”

“A
full
plate,” Craugh said, ignoring Carason’s reply. “I’ll settle for quantity—and hot—rather than quality from some would-be meat burner with grandiose ideas. I’ve just come in on a small ship that boasted only water and hardtack by voyage’s end.”

“I’ve never seen a ship come into Greydawn Moors in such a shape as you describe,” Carason protested. “You’re just a picky eater. And like as not, you skipped eating so you could come in here and eat for free as you normally do.”

“Well, then,” Craugh said with a grudging smile, “are you going to feed me or are you going to try to talk me to death?”

Still complaining about the lack of gratitude in wizards in general and Craugh in particular, Carason stepped into the back kitchen to see to the food himself.

As soon as the plate hit the table, Craugh thanked Carason and began eating with grim ruthlessness. “Well,” he said, glancing at Juhg, “tuck in. When I’m finished, you’re finished. There’s not going to be any lollygagging about during this meal.”

That was something of a challenge as well as a threat, Juhg knew from past experience. Craugh loved to eat, and could eat surprising amounts that his skinny frame denied, but he wasted no time on the enjoyment of any repast set before him. Juhg set himself to the task.

They ate mostly in silence, the calm quiet that those who have shared the road in dangerous times and in dangerous places know. And it was mostly silent because every herdsman and farmer who had witnessed Craugh’s show of wizardry had left.

*   *   *

“Ertonomous Dron.” Craugh repeated the wizard’s name after Juhg finished telling of the battle against
Blowfly
that had gained
Windchaser
the mysterious book that the Grandmagister held. “I think perhaps I’ve heard the name in my travels, but I’ve never met the man. From what I recall, he was an evil and despicable man.” He puffed on his pipe. “Are you certain that he’s dead?”

“He was left at the bottom of the ocean near the Tattered Islands,” Juhg said. “Even if he survived, it’s a long way to the mainland. Or even to the Tattered Islands.”

Craugh stroked his beard. “Still, you’d be surprised at what wizards can live through.” He smiled grimly at past memories. “The Old Ones know the fits I’ve given some of my enemies when they thought they’d killed me. Eh, Wick?”

The Grandmagister nodded as he turned pages in the book. “Yes. I do remember the Falmorrean Gargoyle quest in particular. Even I thought you were dead that time.”

That adventure, Juhg knew, was one he had not been privy to in conversation or in the Grandmagister’s journals he’d read, and he’d read all of them that were available. The Grandmagister had not allowed all of his personal journals of his travels to be entered into the Library. Still, he had used those narratives as resources and contributed several monographs on historical sites, biographies of people long dead, and discussions of architecture and constructions that hinted at the places he had gone and the things he had seen and done on those missing travels. He also had not given any indication why those narratives of those journeys were missing from the Library stacks.

“That was a dicey bit of business,” Craugh said.

“If there ever was.” The Grandmagister kept turning pages, only halfway paying attention to his friend. “I thought we were both dead.” He puffed contentedly on his pipe, then took it from his mouth and used the stem to chase sentences across the page. “I can’t believe as widely read as I am that I can’t at least guess at the origins of this language.”

“You don’t know everything, Wick,” Craugh said. “At least, you don’t know everything
yet.
”

Juhg heard the emphasis and his curiosity pricked immediately. There was some kind of hidden communication between the wizard and the Grandmagister. On past trips, he had seen and heard evidence of the same thing. Neither Grandmagister Lamplighter nor Craugh were given to let everyone in on his secrets.

“Mayhap someday I will,” the Grandmagister mused. He sighed, then looked at the wizard. “You said you had news of the mainland.”

Craugh nodded and breathed out a wreath of smoke. “The goblinkin are massing along the South. They’re growing stronger every day.”

“Why?” the Grandmagister asked.

The news left a chill in Juhg’s heart. He had been imprisoned for all those years in a mining colony in the South.

“I don’t know.” Craugh frowned. “Oh, I’ve heard rumblings of a council of goblinkin going to form, and even that some new prophecy has come into being among the tribe clans.”

“A prophecy?” the Grandmagister asked.

Craugh waved the possibility off with a hand. “The same folderol the goblinkin trot out every so often. At least, when those creatures even think to remember to do so. That Lord Kharrion will rise to lead them again.”

“Something is bringing the goblinkin together.”

“Yes. I’ve traveled there, Wick. Seen them myself. They are massing down near the Quartz Sea. I’ve stayed up in the mountains and spied upon them through the eyes of a falcon—not very settling to the stomach after a while, I must tell you. There are valleys and hills and dales filled with those noxious hide tents goblinkin use when those creatures march in the field instead of out in the ruins of one town or another.”

“Have you identified any leaders among them?”

Craugh shook his head. “Oh, you’ll see one goblin talking big one day only to see another run that one through the next day.”

“Usually that will set one tribe against another.”

“Mayhap it still will. But for now, they seem content not to try to kill each other in great masses. That, in itself, is a frightening thought: that we can’t depend on the goblinkin to simply destroy each other over pillaging rights.” Craugh puffed on his pipe. “You do know the tale of the Quartz Sea, don’t you?”

The Grandmagister nodded. He reached for his current personal journal, opened it to the bookmark ribbon, then took out a fresh quill and a bottle of ink. With a deft, sure hand that Juhg was so familiar with after years of experience, the Grandmagister worked.

A map took shape across the fresh, clean page. The shoreline looked like a crescent moon. Patches of rock formed as well. The Grandmagister moved smoothly, picking up ink with the quill and adding lines, then back to the ink before the last line faded too much.

“I know about the Quartz Sea.” A troubled look settled onto the Grandmagister’s brow.

“We’ve never talked about this tale,” Craugh said. “I didn’t know if you were aware of the legend.”

“I am,” the Grandmagister said. “And I’m convinced that’s all it is: a legend.”

“Hmmpph,” Craugh snorted. “It’s only a legend till it crawls out of the night or the shadows and bites you on your nether regions.”

“There’s nothing crawling out of the Quartz Sea,” the Grandmagister insisted. “That place is dead.”

“Have you seen the Valley of Broken Bones that lies in the foothills of the Mountains of Despair near the Quartz Sea?” Craugh asked.

“No.”

“Then would it surprise you to learn that the valley is now covered in verdant growth and game is in goodly supply?”

The Grandmagister looked up. “Yes. Yes, that would surprise me. The Quartz Sea was one of the worst damaged areas during the war. One of the worst damaged that the Unity of dwarves, humans, and elves caused, at any rate. From the descriptions I’d read of the place, nothing would ever grow there again.”

“They said the same thing of Teldane’s Bounty,” Craugh replied. “You saw for yourself all those years ago when you were sold in the slave auction at Hanged Elf’s Point that regrowth was taking place there.”

“As well as the massing of the goblinkin,” Juhg said, remembering the Grandmagister’s account of those times.

“That was because of the slave market,” the Grandmagister said, dismissing the similarity. “And because of the protection Fomhyn Mhout and his Purple Cloaks provided in the area.”

“While Fomhyn Mhout researched the dark magicks he pursued,” Craugh agreed. “We almost didn’t catch that.”

“
We
didn’t,” the Grandmagister said. “Brant did.”

“They say the Gut-Twisting Catacombs still lie beneath the Quartz Sea and that dead creatures roam the tunnels,” Craugh stated in a quiet voice. “No one of the Unity has ever seen the place.”

“No, and no one ever will. The wizards of the Unity sealed the place off, remember?”

“Things that have been sealed,” Craugh said, “have a way of coming unsealed.” He pointed his pipe at the book on the table. “Just as you intend to ferret out the secrets of that book.”

Grandmagister Lamplighter thumbed the book Juhg had taken from
Blowfly
again. Juhg couldn’t clearly identify the Grandmagister’s motivation as interest or irritation.

“No book has ever defied me before,” the Grandmagister said.

Juhg knew the claim was not false, nor born of pride or self-aggrandizement. Grandmagister Lamplighter had become the wisest of all the Grandmagisters who had ever served at the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Of course, no Grandmagister before him had ever possessed as keen an understanding of all that the Library held, or had traveled—and traveled extensively at that—throughout the mainland.

“Nor will this tome stand long in your way,” Craugh said.

The wizard’s apparent belief in the Grandmagister made Juhg feel proud of his mentor’s accomplishments. Grandmagister Lamplighter had labored hard during his tenure of service to the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Over the years, Juhg had also been surprised to see Craugh—for all his wizardly accomplishments—defer to the knowledge that the Grandmagister possessed on occasion. Of course, the information and learning the Grandmagister kept in his mind had served to save them all a number of times throughout their adventures.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear this was written in no language that was known to men, elves, or dwarves before Lord Kharrion massed the goblinkin and attacked the world.”

Sharp interest flashed in Craugh’s green-as-frog-skin eyes. “If this isn’t one of those languages, Wick, then what are you saying it is?”

“A new language.” The Grandmagister’s pipestem chased a line of writing across the page. He tapped the page with authority. “I know that’s what this must be. I can feel it in my nose.” He tapped his nose.

“How can that be?”

“Someone,” the Grandmagister said in a low voice as he focused on the writing, “invented it.”

“Invented a language?” Juhg couldn’t believe what the Grandmagister said. And he couldn’t believe how casually the Grandmagister advanced the possibility.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Believe it or not, First Level Librarian,” the Grandmagister said dryly, “there was a time when no language at all existed. At one point, all the languages had to be invented. Otherwise dwarves would have continued to draw on cavern walls, elves would have continued to shape trees to tell stories, and humans—well, humans would have forgotten much more than they ever learned.”

Juhg’s mind boggled at the concept.
A new language.
The possibility fired him with excitement, but at the same time filled him with dread.

“Nor were those languages all invented at the same time,” the Grandmagister continued. “They emerged over the centuries as people traveled farther from home and traded more, as they needed them. A means had to be created to keep track of things. Where goods could be bought, when they could be found there, who gave the best prices, when was the best time to travel according to the weather and the markets at the other end of the voyage. That sort of thing.”

Juhg knew that. The birth of the languages lesson had been one of the first the Grandmagister had taught him. That had been back during the time when he hadn’t believed that the Grandmagister could truly read. At first he felt that the Grandmagister believed he’d forgotten even those simple lessons, then he realized that the Grandmagister was only talking out loud, seeking to convince himself in his line of pondering.

“Lord Kharrion sought to push the world back to those primitive days,” Grandmagister Lamplighter said, lost in the memories of the battle he still fought to keep ignorance from claiming all the lands, “to strip our knowledge from us, and to force us to live once again in caves and be afraid of natural things instead of understanding them.” He paused.

The words sounded ominous to Juhg’s ears in the quiet of the eatery.

“The Goblin Lord very nearly did that thing,” the Grandmagister said. “To know how close Lord Kharrion came, all you have to do is look to the mainland, where stories of books and people being able to read are considered myths at best and bad luck to mention at worst, if not outright foolishness that will incite tragedy.”

“But with all the languages that have been used, with all those that have already been invented,” Juhg said, “why invent another?” During their travels, he’d often acted as the Grandmagister’s sounding board. He fell into the routine naturally.

“To keep secrets,” Craugh said, stepping into the conversation and addressing the Grandmagister. “Wizards are rife with secrets while seeking to pillage the secrets of others.”

Grandmagister Lamplighter gazed at the wizard. “And you, old friend, do you share those feelings?”

A cold smile twisted Craugh’s thin lips. “Upon occasion, Grandmagister, I have been known to succumb to those siren calls. The mysteries of the world, how they work and why they work, call out constantly to the likes of me.”

“You’re a meddler,” the Grandmagister accused, and the declaration was only half in jest. The matter was an old but good-natured argument between them. “You can’t be satisfied with just knowing. You have to test things and alter things as well.”

“How else is one to truly know something,” Craugh countered, “without testing and altering?”

“Acceptance,” the Grandmagister replied. “One can learn acceptance.”

“Hmmmph.” Craugh snorted his obvious displeasure with that suggestion.

“But this is a wizard’s book,” Juhg pointed out, wanting to draw the conversation back to the matter at hand. “Wizards know languages. It doesn’t make sense that Ertonomous Dron would invent a language simply for his own use.”