The Destruction of the Books (30 page)

“Juhg!” Grandmagister cried out.

Embarrassed at having been caught so flatfooted by everything that was transpiring, Juhg glanced back at his mentor.

“Go!” the Grandmagister ordered.

Out in the center of the floor, Craugh backed up three paces. His voice sang with fury and the raucous sound of a file rasping along a rough edge not yet ready for fine work. He thrust his staff up before him in both hands, stamping forward with his left foot.

In response to Craugh’s movement and the magic he commanded, the three hundred nineteen books that had been brought into the room leapt from the floor and swirled into the advancing line of attackers. The heavy books bludgeoned the invaders, knocking the Grymmlings back like tenpins and even thudding swiftly enough to dissuade the three Blazebulls that had entered through the mystical gate from continuing on inside the Library.

“No!” Grandmagister Lamplighter wailed. “Craugh! Not the books!”

But the wizard gave no heed, gesturing again to send the books once more against their opponents. Several of the books burst their bindings in the second assault. Pages from paper and vellum books flew into the air, turned into fiery crisps in a heartbeat as the Blazebulls breathed flames on them. The pages swirled in circles, propelled by the winds that blew in from wherever the creatures had come from.

Other pages—stone pages from books made from a single rock, glass pages blown by glassmakers and fused with a dozen different colors, delicate seashell pages hung together by seaweed strings and turtle sinew, snake scale sash books that told histories of individuals and events, and a dozen others—shattered, broke, and fragmented in a rush across the stone floor. Several of the pieces pierced the huge feet of the Grymmlings, but if the creatures cared, they didn’t slow a bit. Bloody footprints, black as squid’s ink, followed them.

Juhg caught the Grandmagister’s eye.

“Go!” Grandmagister Lamplighter ordered again. “Get to the bell! Call the dwarves! You are faster than I am!”

Juhg knew that wasn’t the truth, though. He might have been a little faster than Grandmagister Lamplighter, but Juhg knew the real reason the Grandmagister stayed behind was to stand with his friend. The Grandmagister had never been a brave soul, and tended more toward cautiousness, even after years of adventuring along the mainland and surviving dozens of close calls.

“Now!” the Grandmagister commanded. “Before those horrible imps catch your scent!”

That fact had slipped Juhg’s mind. Grymmlings were noted in the annals he’d read of being expert trackers. Once they had locked onto a potential victim’s blood spoor, they did not deviate from that victim until one or both of them were dead.

Juhg pushed himself into motion, crossing the room as quickly as possible. His movement attracted the attention of a half-dozen Grymmlings. He saw their black, black eyes focus on him, their black tongues ooze between the yellowed jackrabbit teeth, and felt their unwanted attention, their hunger.

One of them threw itself at him. As it closed, hurtling like an arrow launched from a bow, it swept the gleaming crystal knife out at his throat.

Juhg ducked.

Out of control, the Grymmling slammed into a chair, bowling the chair over and spilling in a tangle of arms and legs. Another leapt for Juhg’s legs, arms outspread and jackrabbit teeth open wide to bite deeply.

Leaping into the air, Juhg watched the Grymmling shoot past beneath him. Juhg landed on a study table, knocking over other stacks of books as he skidded across the top. He slipped off the other side before he was ready and dropped to the floor. He landed off balance, gave in to gravity and fell forward, and rolled, coming up on his feet once more. The robes hampered his movement and he shed them as he ran.

Three Grymmlings slammed into the table behind him. They made vicious little noises that sounded like paper cuts might if given voice. The buzzing, burning, irritating chatter filled Juhg’s ears. His lungs filled with deep draughts of air, and he tasted the smoke of burning paper.

Before he reached the door, one of the enchantments laid upon the Vault of All Known Knowledge by the Builders activated. Fire was a problem to any building made up of wood, or even any building made of stone that was shored by wooden timbers. But a fire inside the Library was thought to be the worst thing that could ever happen.

Until the Dread Riders, Blazebulls, and Grymmlings arrived,
Juhg thought as he ran for the door.

Many of the enchantments laid on the room were designed to protect the books. Water was the first line of defense. Drawn from the southern shores of the Blood-Soaked Sea and pulled by magic through the countryside and the stones of the building, water wept from the ceiling inside the room. By the time Juhg reached the door, the condensation that had begun the protection effort had turned into a monsoon, evidently reacting to the intensity of the flames the Blazebulls breathed, as well as Craugh’s own use of that fire.

At this rate, the spell will drain the Blood-Soaked Sea,
Juhg thought. He caught the edge of the door and peered back, watching as Craugh grudgingly gave ground before the fierce aggressors. Then a Grymmling jumped onto the wall almost at Juhg’s face, clinging there with its strong fingers and prehensile toes.

Unable to stop a cry of surprise, Juhg stumbled back in shock, tripped, and fell on his backside. Three more Grymmlings appeared in the door, their yellow eyes vacant and hungry, their crystal blades scraping across the stone floor.

Juhg got himself up and ran, trying desperately to remember which way the alarm bell that would summon the dwarves stationed within the Library as well as those presently on leave down in Greydawn Moors.

In all the history of the Library, the great bell had never rung before. He was going to ring it—the first ever. If he lived.

*   *   *

“Gangway!” Juhg yelled, barely able to part with the breath that it took to force out the warning. “Gangway! Grymmlings!”

He wanted to shout out everything, to tell the Librarians wandering the dimly lit halls of the Vault of All Known Knowledge that the Great Library was under attack. He wanted to tell them that Dread Riders, Blazebulls, and Grymmlings ran rampant. That the Grandmagister’s life might already be forfeit and even Craugh, when Juhg had last seen him, wasn’t faring so very well.

But he didn’t have the breath. And he didn’t have the time.

Librarians by their very nature were not slow creatures. They had a tendency to size up situations quickly. Although none of them had ever seen Grymmlings, at least a few of them recognized the deadly little creatures for what they were.

“Grymmlings!”

“Grymmlings!”

The shrieks roared through the long hallway Juhg was presently running along. He had at last gotten his bearings and remembered where the great alarm bell was located.

Six Librarians ahead of Juhg took up the cry, froze in their tracks for just an instant, then fled in the other direction.

No,
Juhg reflected grimly,
if you show a Librarian a Grymmling, they know at once what to do.
He tried to suck in a deeper breath, and couldn’t. He tried to cry out again to say that the Grandmagister needed help and couldn’t. Desperately, he tried to lift his knees higher to lengthen his stride, or more quickly to hasten his frantic pace, and couldn’t.

The Grymmlings remained just behind him. The low, growling buzz of their tiny voices pursued him relentlessly.

Despite their quick uptake on the situation, the Librarians weren’t as fleet of foot as Juhg was. He caught up with them and passed them, feeling instantly bad when the Grymmlings caught up with the Librarians in the next breath. He shoved and pushed his way through the Librarians.

Juhg shut their piteous cries out of his head. He couldn’t stop. If he fell, the great bell would never be rung and the dwarves would not know that Death had found its way into the Library. Down in the mines, he had sometimes been forced to chop the leg off a dweller who had died of overwork and starvation. Chains had bound them all together, and dragging a dead body around till the end of a shift put an impossible drain on the rest of the chain crew.

Three times during his long years in the goblinkin mines, Juhg had chopped the legs off dwellers who had fallen. They’d also had to carry the leg of a fallen friend back with them each time, to show that the dweller free of the chain hadn’t simply escaped. The average goblinkin wasn’t overly bright, but even they had known that dwellers came with two legs.

Behind Juhg, cries for help became cries of agony. He ran, leaving the cries behind him, but hearing the steady skittering of chitin-hard, overly large feet slapping against the stone floor of the hallway behind him. Unable to help himself, he turned to look.

Lantern light glinted from the crystal knives two Grymmlings carried as they continued their pursuit of Juhg.

Frightened, knowing that his fatigue was slowing his step, feeling the iron bands that had seized up tight around his chest, Juhg faced forward again just before he took a nasty spill down a flight of stone steps. Unfortunately, he knew he would never be able to slow in time to manage the long flight without tripping and falling, quite possibly to his death.

And then there would be no one to ring the bell.

Trusting to his dweller’s surefootedness, Juhg leapt to the railing to the right of the stairs. Only when he gained the railing did he realize he was along the portion of the underground section of the Library most referred to as the Pit.

When the Builders had formed the island during the Dark Years of the Cataclysm before any of the races became certain their warriors stood a chance against Lord Kharrion and his goblinkin army, they had drawn up the earth they had used to make the island from the sea floor. Whatever magic and skills they had used had left a long, vertical pit in the center of the Knucklebones Mountains.

The pit was thirty feet across and, at least from where Juhg stood, ninety feet straight down. The Librarians drew their water from that pit. The salt of the Blood-Soaked Sea—and whatever other revolting stuff lurked out there in those crimson depths—was strained out by the limestone roots of the island.

Heart in his throat, Juhg ran along the railing, telling himself he would not fall. One misstep, he knew, and his race would be run. Rocks waited at the end of that long fall at the bottom of the Pit. Even if he survived the fall and somehow found the small opening that allowed egress into the heart of the mountains again in the complete darkness below, and if the water level was high enough at the moment that he might reach that opening, he would never be able to sound the bell in time.

Despite the Grandmagister’s seeming confidence, Juhg held no real hope that even the dwarven warriors would be able to hold back the things that walked into the Library through the mystical gate. But he ran, fleet of foot, through the dim glow provided by the occasional lantern. This part of the Library generally required a Librarian to bring his own light, as the Librarians he’d heard fall behind him had done.

Reaching the bottom of the railing, he leapt to the floor. No sooner had he landed than one of the two Grymmlings that pursued him landed across his shoulders. Evidently the creature had taken the same route while its companion tumbled and bumped down the stairs.

Cruel teeth bit into Juhg’s right shoulder. Blood coursed, warm and thick, down his side under his blouse. Pain exploded inside his skull as he screamed in fear. Off balance, he fell heavily to his right, slamming into the railing next to the Pit just as he managed to lever his right arm under the Grymmling’s chin and start pulling.

The railing caught Juhg in mid-chest. More pain burned along his ribs as he bent over the railing. However, the sudden stop worked even less in the Grymmling’s favor. The creature tore loose from Juhg, leaving a wake of ripped clothing and long scratches along bruised flesh.

The Grymmling made no noise as it hurtled out into the darkness in the center of the Pit. The last thing Juhg saw of the creature were the venomous yellow eyes and the gleam of the crystal knife as it dropped from sight.

Then the other Grymmling plopped onto the floor in a fetal ball.

Gasping for air, certain his heart was about to explode into a million pieces, Juhg watched as the creature unfolded its limbs, looking like a spider as it shoved out its arms and legs. Then its head popped up and the jackrabbit teeth flared open as it squeaked menacingly.

Juhg pushed himself from the railing and ran the final distance to the door to the alarm bell. Every floor had access to the stairwell that led up to the curving steps that snaked up to the top of the alarm tower. Thankfully, the Grymmling was too stunned to follow at speed until after Juhg grabbed the lantern from the wall outside the doorway, then started up the stairwell.

The Grymmling howled its eerie buzzing noise.

Inside the stairwell, Juhg wasted a moment to look for a latch to lock the door behind him. Then he realized that he was back in the Vault of All Known Knowledge and that no one locked doors inside the Library.

He turned and started up the stairs. His knees protested at once. He felt light-headed and couldn’t quite catch his breath, which tasted like heated brine anyway.

But he made himself go. He had spent years in the goblinkin mines. That experience had not defeated him, only made him stronger in mind and in body than he had ever truly realized before now.

He went, two and three stairs at a time, round and round to the right, so fast that he felt dizzy. The lantern bounced in his other hand and the light whirled around him. He thought he was going to be sick, but he forced himself to keep going, charging into the gloom ahead of him while a lethal shadow nipped at his heels.

*   *   *

At last, just when he was certain that his legs would burst into flames and he couldn’t go another step, Juhg spotted light ahead. Breathing in shuddering gasps, black comets whirling in his vision, he raised the lantern high at the end of his trembling arm.