The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice) (26 page)

Marco wanted to leave his friends behind in someplace that was safe; he knew that they had all survived so far only through luck, and he knew he couldn’t protect them if the next stage of the quest was any more challenging than the first stage of their journey had been.  It would be a dark journey, and he probably would not be able to offer the vision or the light to show them the safest way to move forward, as much as they needed him to illuminate the path for them.

And with that meandering thought, Marco suddenly closed his eyes and gasped.  His hand, which he had forgotten, but which he still held in front of his face, suddenly blazed forth with a brilliance that blinded his eyes.  At the same moment, he heard a scurrying sound somewhere in the library.  He could feel his hand emitting its energy.  Marco held his hand far to his right, and turned his head to the left, then opened his eyes and looked at the scene around him.

Cassius’s head was lifting sleepily; Marco could see it clearly.  He could see the walls beyond Cassius, and as he turned his head, he could clearly see the small details of the murals on the walls on the opposite side of the library’s interior.  His hand was blazing away, throwing out as much light as a miniature sun inside the library.

Cassius blinked, then raised his hand in front of his eyes.  “Marco, what’s happening?” he asked.

Marco focused his thoughts on the hand.  He didn’t need the light to shine, and he needed to figure out how to cut off the blazing illumination.  He hadn’t even meant to create the light, extraordinary as it was.  The hand needed to darken; it needed to stop blazing forth so brightly, and he directed his thoughts and emotions at it.  There was no one who needed the light – not him, not his friends.

The room immediately grew considerably dimmer, and Cassius lowered his hand as he squinted at Marco.  There was still light, but only a fraction of what had been shining before.

There was a distant sound, the noise of many pairs of feet approaching the library at a rapid pace.  Marco swung his hand around in front of his face, and saw that it only provided the soft glow of a lantern now.  Cassius sat up straight, throwing his blankets back, and crawling forward to look at Marco’s hand closely.

“Is it burning?  Does it hurt?  How do you do that?” he asked softly.

Marco gingerly pressed the finger of his left hand against the right, and felt only the typical soft flesh he might expect under normal circumstances.

“It doesn’t feel any different than my other hand,” Marco answered, and watched as Cassius tentatively poked his own finger against one of Marco’s glowing digits.

There was a banging sound below, and a squad of men appeared, rushing into the library carrying buckets.  They stopped as they entered, the ones in the rear crashing into those in the front, and they stared around in confusion.

Startled at the sight of them, Marco wanted his hand to stop glowing, and to his surprise, it did.

“Where’s the fire?” a voice asked in the darkness.

“It was here; they exploded something up there on the balcony,” another voice answered, perplexed in tone.

“Visitors, do you have a fire, or a lantern?” a voice asked.

“We had a light, but it just went out,” Marco answered.

“You got us all out of bed for a fire; where’s the fire?” a third voice asked.  “Were you dreaming?  Did you fall asleep on duty?”

“No,” one of the other voices protested.  “I saw an enormous flash, and the whole room was as bright as day.”

“I didn’t hear an explosion,” someone else commented.

There was the sound of feet shuffling, and the group of firemen departed from the library, still grumbling and talking among themselves.

“Go back to sleep,” Marco told Cassius.  “I won’t do it again.”

Cassius crawled back into his blankets.  “Did you mean to do that?”

“I was trying to figure out how to make the power in my hand serve our needs,” Marco answered, as he stood up and leaned over the balcony railing, looking down at the dark floor below.  “I didn’t exactly mean to make my hand glow, but now I think I may be able to do it again in the future if we need.”

He shook his head, unseen in the darkness, as he thought about what had happened.

The rest of his watch was peaceful, as Marco refrained from any further experiments, and when Cassius awoke him in the morning, Kate and Pesino were already down on the library floor, talking to two new librarians.  Marco ate a hasty handful of dried foods, then pulled on his boots and walked down to join the others.

“I am Keid,” a young man introduced himself, a very handsome man, with blond, curly hair and fair skin.  He had striking features, and both Kate and Pesino stood close to him.

“I am Schedir,” spoke his companion, also young.  She was a young woman with dark brown hair, and though not as attractive as Kate, Pesino, or Keid, she had a sweet smile that made her look like a friendly companion.

“We are acolytes of the library, and we have been assigned to help you in your research here,” Keid explained.  “We look forward to this rare opportunity, and we hope we can give you useful assistance.”

“Where would you like to begin?” Schedir asked.

“We want to find information about the Echidna,” Kate spoke up.

“Then we should look in the mythology section,” Keid replied.

“You come with us and take us there,” Kate said, placing her hand on Keid’s shoulder, and motioning to Pesino.  “You three can look somewhere else.”

Keid moved into a tangle of bookcases in the back of the library, with Kate and Pesino following him closely.

“We should go look in mythology too,” Schedir said, watching the first three disappear.

“No, let’s go look somewhere else.  What about history or geography?” Marco asked.

Schedir looked at him doubtfully.

“What about the study of animals, of monsters in particular?” Marco asked.

“Animal biology is over that way,” Schedir answered as she pointed.  “Monsters would be in mythology.”

“I’ll go look in the animal books, if you want to take Cassius to look through geography,” Marco proposed.

“We really ought to go to the mythology section,” Schedir objected.

“Let’s do it my way today,” Marco stuck to his suggestion.

The girl relented, and led Marco to a set of book cases very near the main door.  “Here are the books about animals.

“If you’ll come with me,” she told Cassius, “we’ll go look in geography.”

Marco watched them disappear around a corner of the book stacks, and then he looked up at the innumerable volumes that awaited his investigation.

He pulled down a large volume, one that was both thick and tall, hoping that it would have the greatest possible list of all the animals that existed, including monsters.  With the book under his arm, Marco walked to a brightly lit table that caught the sun’s rays reflected off a marble wall.  Marco sat down, and started looking through the book.  Each page had etchings of two or three animals, with a description of the animal, its habits, and where it lived.

Marco started flipping through the pages, pausing occasionally to read about an animal he’d never heard of, or one that he knew well.  The information was fascinating, but when he heard a sound behind him he found it was Schedir coming to give him a lunch break.  “The morning’s already over?” he asked, looking at his first book, which was not yet completely read.

“It’s time to come back and join the others if you want something to eat,” she confirmed.

Marco followed her back to the balcony, where a basket had been delivered full of fruit and meat and bread, and his companions were chatting with one another and Keid as they ate the goods.

“Keid doesn’t believe in the Island of Ophiuchus or echildas,” Kate told Marco as he sat down.

“Does he believe in pixies?” Marco asked with a grin.

“Those are children’s tales,” Keid answered, as Schedir nodded agreement.

“Gawail, are you a child’s tale?” Kate asked, as she pulled at the neck opening of her blouse.

The pixie came shooting out shining so brightly in his indignation that he was clearly visible, even in the full daylight that filled the library.

“Saints be praised!” Keid said in wonder.  “Is that really a pixie?”

“Are you really ignorant?” Gawail said as he landed in the center of the group.  “Our people live in the Nightshade Mountains all summer long.  How can you not know that we’re real?”

“We haven’t been told,” Schedir answered.  “Our apologies, noble pixie.”

“Pixies are as real as the island or sorcerers or mermaids or any of the other things we’ve seen so far,” Marco told the two astonished librarians.  “And I believe the
Echidna is just as real as well.”

“Sorcerers and mermaids too?” Keid repeated.  “You say that there are such beings?”

“I’ve fought a sorcerer, and paid the price in the battle,” Marco nodded.

“I’ve known many a merman,” Pesino chimed in.

“They’re very handsome creatures,’ Cassius added.

“And the island?” Keid asked in a faint voice.

“I’ve been there; been healed there as a matter of fact, and been given direction.  The island has sent me on this quest, and these friends are traveling with me,” he said.  And they were friends, he realized.  Cassius and Pesino were no longer the merpeople watching over him –they were his companions and friends, as was Kate, who had run away from unpleasantry at home in the Lion City, and found herself in an adventure many times greater than she could have ever imagined.

“And you really mean to go in search of the
Echidna?” Keid asked.

“Just as soon as we can.  There are people waiting for us to complete this journey,” he glanced at Cassius, who looked down.

Gawail excused himself and flew back into Kate’s shirt, as the group finished their meal.

“We’ll help you with you search, as a serious search,” Schedir pledged.  “We’ll find the information about the
Echidna if it’s anywhere here in the library.

The two librarians were motivated all afternoon long, helping the others work through the shelves of books, trying to find the most likely ones to offer information, stacking discarded books away.

“We’ve got something!” Kate’s voice rang out as the sun’s ray shifted around.  Marco followed the sound of her voice, and arrived just as Cassius and Schedir did.

“This book talks about the
Echidna that lives up in the northern mountains,” Kate said.  “There’s a story about a knight who goes to fight the monster to save a princess who’s been kidnapped.”

“Where are the northern mountains?” Marco asked Kied.

“It depends on the country.  Almost every nation has some mountains in the north; they all have their own northern mountains.  We’ll have to keep looking,” he said.

“What did the knight report?” Marco asked.

“He died too quickly to return and report,” Kate said quietly.

By nightfall the group was weary of their search.  They’d found no other references, but felt buoyed by Kate’s success.  “We’ll be back tomorrow morning to help again,” Schedir promised as the two librarians left the others behind.

Soon afterwards, as the travelers gathered at their balcony camp spot, they heard boot steps below, and looked to see an unknown librarian come towards them.  “We invite you to dinner tonight with a pair of our people who wish to meet you,” the messenger told them, and soon the four from the south were heading to the back portions of the library for another meal.

The room they entered was a larger, more luxurious room than the one they had visited the night before.   Two men they didn’t know sat at the table, along with Adhara and Acamar, their hosts from the previous evening.

“We heard such extraordinary things about you,” said Taset, a burly man introduced as the leader of the librarians, “that I wanted to meet you for myself.”

“I am Zosma, a reporter for our group,” said the other man when he was introduced.  “I regularly go to the Lion City, and I wanted to meet some residents of the city.”

They all were seated, as servants brought out bowls of warm soup to start the meal.

“We have had a visitor from our neighbors in the city, the monks of St. Gereon,” Taset said.  “They report that dangerous criminals escaped from their imprisonment, and they wish to recapture them,” he said to the alarm of Marco and the others.

“They describe four people very much like you, except they say one pair is a witch and a warlock,” Taset looked at where Marco and Pesino sat side-by-side.  “They described a woman who can seduce a man to follow her will, just using her voice, and a man who has supernatural powers.”

“And Kied reports that you brought forth a pixie today in the library!” Zosma added with a smile.

Marco and his friends sat silently, as their hosts smiled, waiting for the visitors to laugh and deny the accusations.

“Well, we’re not a witch and warlock,” Marco said.  He smiled briefly at Pesino.  “But we’re not ordinary travelers.  We’ve told your people that we are on a quest, one that was set for me by a higher power.”