The Destruction of the Books (3 page)

“I warned ye,” Raisho said.

Reluctantly, thinking that he might try cleaning the firepear preserves off to at least salvage the corn cake, Juhg realized the futility of the effort and shoved the morsel over to the young sailor.

Raisho smiled broadly as he accepted the surrender. “Thank ye kindly.”

“Don’t mention it,” Juhg croaked, then drank more tea. He focused on the remnants of his meal, getting most of them slightly ahead of Raisho’s questing fingers.

“The book.”

Juhg regarded his friend. He had known Raisho for three years before signing ship’s articles with
Windchaser
and Captain Attikus. Raisho usually didn’t possess the tenacity of thought he now so plainly exhibited.

Keeping his voice pitched low, Juhg said, “I was making notes about this place.”

“The port?”

“Yes. Kelloch’s Harbor.”

Raisho sorted through Juhg’s plate and found a sizable chunk of pricklemelon. He popped the green and red fruit into his mouth and relished the salty sweet rush of flavor.

“I could order you a plate,” Juhg said. “We could pay from our profits.”

Grinning, Raisho agreed. “We could. We could indeed. But I’m not that hungry.” He took a baked potato in his fingers and upended the tuber to pour the honey-glazed seaweed into his mouth. He chewed and sighed with content.

Juhg marveled at the young sailor’s capacity. Even Taurak Bleiyz, fictional dweller hero—
And wasn’t that a redundancy?
—and champion whose own appetites were legendary, would have been shamed by Raisho’s ability to consume.

“All this writin’ ye’re doin’ here an’ aboard
Windchaser,
” Raisho said, “makes me wonder if’n ye were truly ready to leave the Vault.”

Glancing around quickly, Juhg made certain that no one had overheard the conversation. “Raisho, I beg you to watch your tongue. I swear, it fairly luffs in the breeze created by your breathing. No one here knows of that place, and it would be better to keep it that way.”

Greydawn Moors existed on no known map. Old magic, ancient and powerful magic, had created the island where the Vault of All Known Knowledge had been hidden away since Lord Kharrion had begun gathering his goblin armies. Those magicks wielded by the human wizards had torn the island from the sea bottom. Dwarves, according to the histories, had shorn up the thick stone columns that held the island in place at the ocean’s bottom. Elven warders had made the risen island fertile and loosed the great aquatic monsters that roamed freely in the Blood-Soaked Sea beneath the pall of continual gray fog kept in place by an ancient enchantment.

A sober expression fitted itself to Raisho’s face. “I know. I know.” He waved Juhg’s warning away. “All this secrecy, it’s just easy to ferget, ye know.”

“No,” Juhg said distinctly, “it’s not.”

“Aye. Perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s just me.”

“And perhaps it’s the ale,” Juhg suggested.

“I was just of a mind to celebrate, is all.” Raisho pushed his ale mug away, then folded his arms across his chest petulantly. “Wasn’t exactly me fault ye weren’t in the first tavern I went a-lookin’ fer ye in.”

“No,” Juhg said agreeably. “I suppose it wasn’t. And I suppose there were a half-dozen such establishments between that one and this one.”

“I don’t know,” Raisho agreed guiltily. “I didn’t count.”

Juhg didn’t want his friend to feel too badly. Raisho’s mistake was less than if he’d drawn attention by writing in the journal. Juhg used his knife to nudge a flutterfish fillet toward the young sailor.

Raisho took the fillet in his fingers, tilted his head back, and dropped the food into his mouth. He chewed contentedly. “I thought ye knew all about Kelloch’s Harbor from them—” He stopped himself before he said
books
.

Before leaving Greydawn Moors, Juhg had prepared for his journey by choosing the ship he would secure passage on. From there, based on his knowledge of Captain Attikus’ normal trade routes, Juhg had assembled a book regarding conversations he’d had with sailors who had frequented the taverns along the Yondering Docks.

“The knowledge that I had,” Juhg said, “was good enough to prepare a modest trade venture, but there is so much that was left out of my … sources.”

“So ye’re figurin’ on remedyin’ that? With yer own efforts?”

Juhg pondered that. He didn’t have an actual reason for all of his writing. He just couldn’t seem to help himself. Still, Raisho’s supposition gave him at least an excuse for his efforts. “It seemed the thing to do. I can always send the … my work … back with another ship. Or with
Windchaser.
”

Shaking his head, Raisho asked, “Have ye given any thought to the possibility that ye weren’t through with yer work there? That maybe Grandmagister Lamplighter was right about yer callin’ an’ what ye was truly meant to be?”

Quietly contemplating another bite of pricklemelon, Juhg said nothing.

“I can see that ye have thought about all of that,” Raisho said a moment later. “Ye miss all them … Well, ye know what I’m talking about.”

Juhg did indeed. Raisho’s deliberate nonuse of the word
books
resonated within him. The Vault of All Known Knowledge was the world’s repository of literature, of nonfiction and fiction. When Lord Kharrion had led the goblins across the world to pillage and loot, they had deliberately destroyed books. Vast libraries, some that had existed in fact and some that existed only in legend, were lost.

Thousands of books remained within the Vault, though, and cataloguing them all had taken generations of dwellers in an attempt to put the collections to rights. Juhg missed the Great Library. All those years ago, the Builders had raised the structure so hurriedly that blueprints of the vast buildings and caverns did not exist. The wings and hallways and stairways meandered all across the mountaintop. The lower sections of the Library stood honeycombed from the Knucklebones Mountains up above the Ogre’s Fingers. Some dweller historians continued to maintain that the Builders had constructed part of the island from the body of a giant ogre Lord Kharrion had ensorcelled into his service.

Those events had taken place during the dark times known as the Cataclysm. Even now, after all those centuries had passed, the books gathered in the Vault of All Known Knowledge remained zealously guarded by the dweller Librarians, as well as the elves and the dwarves who lived there.

“I couldn’t stay there,” Juhg said.

“Grandmagister Lamplighter made a home fer ye,” Raisho said. “As he made homes fer others over the years who he brought home from his travels. Ye could still be there. An’ if’n ye so chose, why, I’m sure the Grandmagister would welcome ye back with open arms.”

Juhg knew that.

“Way I heard it,” Raisho said in a softer voice, “ye were like to a son to him, ye were.”

“I know,” Juhg said. “But my family may still be out there.” Then he corrected himself. “
Here.
They may still be
here
. I’ve got a mother and a father, two brothers and a sister that I know of.”

“If’n the goblin slavers the Grandmagister freed ye from didn’t do fer ’em.”

Juhg glanced at the young sailor.

Raisho’s blue eyes held a stricken look. “Didn’t mean no harm nor foul, Juhg. Just tryin’ to put everythin’ in perspective fer ye because I care about ye. Which is why I put in a good word with Cap’n Attikus fer ye.”

“What do you mean?”

Embarrassment colored Raisho’s face. “Nothin’. I meant nothin’. Just me mouth betrayin’ me mind again.”

“You meant something,” Juhg said with a little force. During their three-year friendship, he’d never put too much pressure on the ties that bound them. “What did you mean?”

Raisho scowled. “Don’t ye be botherin’ the cap’n with it. Like as not, he won’t be overly fond of either of us if ye go off askin’ him about this. Better we should just keep it betwixt us.”

“What word did you put in?”

Shrugging, Raisho answered, “Weren’t much. Cap’n Attikus, he just wasn’t too happy about takin’ on a scribbler, is all.”

A scribbler!
Juhg couldn’t believe it. Captain Attikus was one of the few ship’s captains in all the world who knew Greydawn Moors laid across the forbidden expanse of the Blood-Soaked Sea. The captain knew why the island had to remain hidden. If the goblin ships discovered the existence of the Vault of All Known Knowledge, they would sail on Greydawn Moors and burn the island down to the waterline, showing no mercy to man or beast.

Librarians at the Vault held great respect from those who knew of them. Unfortunately, not many knew of them.

“A
scribbler
!” Juhg gasped in disbelief. Anger stirred within him. “The term is grossly offensive.” Accepting it meant accepting an insult to the time and effort his teachers had put into him as well. He couldn’t do that.

Raising his hands meekly, Raisho said, “Now, now. Don’t go off an’ get yer dander all riled up.”

But Juhg couldn’t stop himself. He had lived as a slave for fourteen years before Grandmagister Lamplighter had freed him and brought him back to Greydawn Moors. “Librarians offer so much more than merely readers and writers. They hold storehouses of knowledge, hold keys to information that many would consider to be magic, and ways of understanding that can give people access to worlds. Real worlds as well as made-up ones. Where would civilization be without biographies, volumes on agriculture, sailing, and construction? Where would the imagination be without the heroes in stories? Where would the heart be without passionate tales of love and loneliness and sacrifice?”

“Avast there, matey,” Raisho said. “It’s not me ye’re in need of convincin’.”

Juhg slumped back in the rickety wooden chair. He nearly tumbled off the worn cushion his height had forced him to use in order to reach his meal. “I thought the captain was an ally.”

“The cap’n
is
an ally.” Raisho scowled. “Ye’ll find none truer than Cap’n Attikus an’ the crew of
Windchaser.
” He paused. “He just weren’t very happy about takin’ on someone so … so…”

“Short?” Juhg supplied with just a hint of sarcasm to point out his friend’s poor attempt to excuse the sea captain.

“New to the sea,” Raisho said.

“I am a skilled sailor,” Juhg protested. “I learned my skills aboard
One-Eyed Peggie
when the Grandmagister returned from the mainland all those years ago.”

“The cap’n didn’t know that.”

Juhg stopped for a moment. His advent to Greydawn Moors had been almost thirty years before. As a dweller, he was still young, not even of middle age before he hit his fiftieth birthday. But thirty years was most of a lifetime to a human. Few humans probably still lived who remembered the story, and humans rarely lived on Greydawn Moors.

“You’re right,” Juhg said.

“Cap’n Attikus,” Raisho pointed out, “likes to run a tight ship.”

Juhg knew that as well. During the past few weeks, Captain Attikus had impressed the dweller.

“Even with what I said,” Raisho went on, “I doubt the cap’n would have taken ye on if’n it hadn’t been fer the Grandmagister talkin’ to him.”

“Wick…” Juhg caught himself using the Grandmagister’s name with such familiar abandon and stopped at once. “The Grandmagister put in a good word for me?”

“Aye.” Raisho nodded. “Several, in fact.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I don’t think either the Grandmagister or the cap’n wanted much known about it. If’n I hadn’t been aboardship finishin’ up some sail an’ riggin’ repairs, why, I wouldn’ta known it either.”

Juhg pondered that. Grandmagister Lamplighter had acted loath to lose him from the Vault.
Was that an act? Was I really a mistake that he had made but couldn’t admit to?
The questions pounded at Juhg’s mind. During the nearly thirty years he had been at the Great Library and studied under the Grandmagister and the other First Level Librarians, he had never felt as if he belonged.

“Don’t get all caught up in them names an’ the circumstances of how ye came to be aboard
Windchaser,
” Raisho said. “Ye’re aboard her, an’ ye’re doin’ a powerful good job of mendin’ sail an’ keepin’ the ship tidy. An’ Cook? Why, Cook says he’s never in all his days had a finer helper. Nor one who knew more recipes than him.”

“That was a gracious compliment,” Juhg acknowledged.
Not that Cook would ever bestow it upon me.

“It were.” Raisho nodded, obviously feeling the conversation was once more safely out of treacherous waters. But being Raisho, he couldn’t leave it there. “What I was a-gettin’ at was that maybe ye ain’t as done with that part of yer life as ye thought ye was.”

“I’m done,” Juhg said decisively, but he felt the declaration was more for himself than Raisho. Still, his inner turmoil would subside somewhat if his friend made no further mention of the Library.

“The Grandmagister, why, he told Cap’n Attikus that ye was a natural to … to that trade. He seemed right sad to lose ye.”

“And I was sad to lose him,” Juhg admitted. “But my life is not there on that island. After everything I’ve been through, Raisho, after everything I’ve seen and everything I’ve read, I want a bigger world.” He shook his head and lowered his voice in shame. “Librarians aren’t supposed to want that. They’re supposed to want books and tea and the occasional bowl of pipeweed.”

“Mayhap,” Raisho said, nodding.

“I can’t do that.” But he had wished that he could, pleaded with himself to be happy with a small life. He used the search for his missing family only as an excuse to leave, and guilt stung him over that. “Greydawn Moors is just too … too … small.”

Raisho nodded for a moment and took up a chunk of pricklemelon. “Seems to me that the Grandmagister gets around a lot fer a dweller. Never heard of a Grandmagister afore him that left the island.”

“Never,” Juhg agreed. Grandmagister Edgewick Lamplighter had been like no other head of the Vault of All Known Knowledge who had ever gone before. Juhg didn’t know the reason for all of Wick’s adventures to the mainland, but he knew the reason for some of them.

When he had found Juhg, Grandmagister Lamplighter had been seeking the truth to the legend of the Jade Basilisk. Both of them had barely escaped from the Arena of a Thousand Blades only a half step ahead of death. If Cap’n Hallekk and the crew of
One-Eyed Peggie
hadn’t been waiting along the coast, they would have never gotten free of the Darkling Lands and mad King Kuthbart.