The Last Guardian (6 page)

“Khadgar, sir,” said the youth.

“The new assistant,” said the older mage. “Of course. Forgive, but the memory is not everything it once was. Too much going on, I’m afraid.”

“Anything you need aid with, sir?” asked Khadgar.

The elder man seemed to think about it for a moment, then said, “The library, Young Trust.

How are things in the library?”

“Good,” said Khadgar. “Very good. I’m busy sorting the books and papers.”

“Ah, by subject? Author?” asked the master mage.

Fatal and non-fatal,thought Khadgar. “I’m thinking by subject. Many are anonymous.”

“Hmmmfph,” said Medivh. “Never trust anything that a man will not set his reputation and name upon.

Carry on, then. Tell me, what is opinion of the Kirin Tor mages about King Llane? Do they ever mention him?”

The work proceeded with glacial slowness, but Medivh did not seem to be aware of the time involved.

Indeed, he seemed to start each morning with being mildly and pleasantly surprised that Khadgar was still with them, and after a short summary of the progress the conversation would switch into a new direction.

“Speaking of libraries,” he would say. “What is the Kirin Tor’s librarian, Korrigan, up to?”

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“How do people in Lordaeron feel about elves? Have any ever been seen there, in living memory?”

“Are there any legends of bull-headed men in the halls of the Violet Citadel?”

And one morning, about week into Khadgar’s stay, Medivh was not present at all.

“Gone,” said Moroes simply when asked.

“Gone where?” asked Khadgar.

The old castellan shrugged, and Khadgar could almost hear the bones clatter within his form.

“He’s not one to say.”

“What’s he doing?” pressed Khadgar.

“Not one to say.”

“When will he be back?”

“Not one to say.”

“He would leave me alone in his tower?” asked Khadgar. “Unsupervised, with all his mystic texts?”

“Could come stand guard over you,” volunteered Moroes. “If that’s what you want.”

Khadgar shook his head, but said, “Moroes?”

“Ayep, young sir?”

“These visions…” started the younger man.

“Blinders?” suggested the servant.

Khadgar shook his head again. “Do they show the future or the past?”

“Both, when I’ve noticed, but I usually don’t,” said Moroes. “Notice, that is.”

“And the ones of the future, do they come true?” said the young man.

Moroes let out what Khadgar could only assume was a deep sigh, a bone-rattling exhalation. “In my experience, yes, young sir. In one vision Cook saw me break a piece of crystal, so she hid them away.

Months passed, and finally the Master asked for that piece of crystal. She removed it from its hiding place, and within two minutes I had broken it. Completely unintentionally.” He sighed again. “She got her rose quartz lenses the next day. Will there be anything else?”

Khadgar said no, but was troubled as he climbed the staircase to the library level. He had gone as far as he had dared so far in his organization, and Medivh’s sudden disappearance left him high and dry, without further direction.

The young would-be apprentice entered the library. On one side of the room were those volumes (and remains of volumes) that the cricket had determined were “safe,” while the other half of the room was

filled with the (generally more complete) volumes that were noted as being trapped.

The great tables were covered with loose pages and unopened correspondence, laid out in two semiregular heaps. The shelves were entirely bare, the chains hanging empty of their prisoners.

Khadgar could sort through the papers, but better to restock the shelves with the books. But most of the volumes were untitled, or if titled, their covers so barely worn, scuffed, and torn as to be illegible. The only way to determine contents would be to open the books.

Which would set off the trapped ones. Khadgar looked at the scorched mark on the floor and shook his head.

Then he started looking, first among the trapped volumes, then among the untrapped ones, until he found what he was looking for. A book marked with the symbol of the key.

It was locked, a thick metal band holding it closed, secured by a lock. Nowhere in his searches had

Khadgar come across a real key, though that did not surprise him, given the organization of the room.

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The binding was strong, and the cover itself was a metal plate bound in red leather.

Khadgar pulled the flat pieces of keys from his pouch, but they were all insufficient for the large lock.

Finally, using the tip of his scraping knife, Khadgar managed to thread the sliver of metal through the lock, and it gave a satisfying “click” as he drove it home.

Khadgar looked at the cricket he kept on the table, and it was still silent.

Holding his breath, the young mage opened the heavy volume. The sour smell of decayed paper rose to his nostrils.

“Of Trapes and Lockes,” he said aloud, wrapping his mouth around the archaic script and over-vowelled words. “Beeing a Treateese on the Nature of Securing Devicees.”

Khadgar pulled up a chair (slightly lower as he had sawed off the three long legs to balance it) and began to read.

Medivh was gone a full two weeks, and by that time, Khadgar had claimed the library as his own.

Each morning he rose for breakfast, gave Moroes a perfunctory update as to his progress (which the castellan, as well as Cook never gave any indication of curiosity about), then buried himself away within the vault.

Lunch and supper were brought to him, and he often worked into the night by the soft bluish light from the glowing balls.

He adjusted to the nature of the tower as well. There were often images that hung at the corner of his eye, just a twinkling of a figure in a tattered cloak that would evaporate when he turned to look at it. A

half-finished word that drifted on the air. A sudden coldness as if a door or window had been left open, or a sudden change of pressure, as if a hidden entrance had suddenly appeared.

Sometimes the tower groaned in the wind, the ancient stones shifting on each other after centuries of construction.

Slowly, he learned the nature, if not the exact contents, of the books that were within the library, foiling the traps that were placed around the most valuable tomes. His research served him well in the last case.

He soon became as expert at foiling spell mechanisms and weighted traps as he had been with locked

doors and hidden secrets in Dalaran. The trick for most of them was to convince the locking mechanism

(whether magical or mechanical in nature) that the lock had not been foiled when in reality it had been.

Determining what set the particular trap off, whether it was weight, or a shifting bit of metal or even exposure to the sun or fresh air, was half the battle to defeating it.

There were books that were beyond him, whose locks foiled even his modified picks and dexterous knife. Those went to the highest level, toward the back, and Khadgar resolved to find out what was within them, either on his own or by threading the knowledge out of Medivh.

He doubted the latter, and wondered if the master mage had used the library as anything else than a dumping ground for inherited texts and old letters. Most mages of the Kirin Tor had at least some semblance of order to their archives, with their most valuable tomes hidden away.

But Medivh had everything in a hodgepodge, as if he didn’t really need it.

Except as a test,thought Khadgar. A test to keep would-be apprentices at bay.

Now the books were on the shelves, the most valuable (and unreadable) ones secured with chains on the upper level, while the more common military histories, almanacs, and diaries were on the lower floor.

Here were the scrolls as well, ranging from mundane listing of items bought and sold in
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Stormwind to recordings of epic poems. The last were particularly interesting since a few of them were about

Aegwynn, Medivh’s claimed mother.

If she lived over eight hundred years, she must have been a powerful mage indeed,thought Khadgar.

More information about her would likely be in the protected books in the back. So far these tomes had resisted every common entreaty and physical attempt to sidestep their locks and traps, and the detecting cricket practically mewled in horror whenever he attempted to unlock them.

Still, there was more than enough to do, with categorizing the loose pieces, reassembling those volumes which age had almost destroyed, and sorting (or at least reading) most of the correspondence. Some of the later was in elven script, and even more of it, from a variety of sources, was in some sort of cipher.

The latter type came with a variety of seals upon it, from both Azeroth, Khaz Modan, and Lordaeron, as well as places that Khadgar could not locate in the atlas. A large group communicated in cipher with each other, and with Medivh himself.

There were several ancient grimoires on codes, most of them dealing with letter replacement and cant.

Nothing compared to the code used in these ciphers. Perhaps they used a combination of methods to create their own.

As a result, Khadgar had the grimoires on codes, along with primers in elven and dwarven languages, open on the table the evening that Medivh suddenly returned to the tower.

Khadgar didn’t hear him as much as felt his sudden presence, the way the air changes as a storm front bears across the farmland. The young mage turned in his chair and there was Medivh, his broad shoulders filling the doorway, his robes billowing behind him of their own volition.

“Sir, I…” started Khadgar, smiling and half-rising from his chair. Then he saw that the master mage’s hair was in disarray, and his lambent green eyes were wide and angry.

“Thief!” shouted Medivh, pointing at Khadgar. “Interloper!” The elder mage pointed at the younger and began to intone a string of alien syllables, words not crafted for the human throat.

Despite himself, Khadgar raised a hand and wove a symbol of protection in the air in front of him, but he might as well have been making a rude hand gesture for all the effect it had on Medivh’s spell. A wall of solidified air slammed into the younger man, bowling over both him and the chair he sat in. The grimoires and primers went skating along the surface of the table like boats caught in a sudden squall, and the notes danced away, spinning.

Surprised, Khadgar was driven back, slammed into one of the bookshelves behind him. The shelf itself rocked from the force of the blow, and the youth was afraid it would topple, spoiling his hard work. The bookcase held its position, though the pressure on Khadgar’s chest from the force of the attack intensified.

“Who are you?” thundered Medivh. “What are you doing here?”

The young mage struggled against the weight on his chest and managed to speak, “Khadgar,” he gasped.

“Assistant. Cleaning library. Your orders.” Part of his mind wondered if this was why Moroes spoke in such a shorthand fashion.

Medivh blinked at Khadgar’s words, and straightened like a man who had just been woken from a deep sleep. He twisted his hand slightly, and at once the wave of solidified air evaporated.

Khadgar dropped to his knees, gasping for air.

Medivh crossed to him and helped him to his feet. “I am sorry, lad,” he began. “I had forgotten you were still here. I assumed you were a thief.”

“A thief that insisted on leaving a room neater than he found it,” said Khadgar. It hurt a little
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when he breathed.

“Yes,” said Medivh, looking around the room, and nodding, despite the disruption his own attack had caused. “Yes. I don’t believe anyone else had ever gotten this far before.”

“I’ve sorted by type,” said Khadgar, still bent over and grasping his knees. “Histories, including epic poems, to your right. Natural sciences on your left. Legendary material in the center, with languages and reference books. The more powerful material—alchemic notes, spell descriptions, and theory go on the balcony, along with some books I could not identify that seem fairly powerful. You’re going to have to look at those yourself.”

“Yes,” said Medivh, now ignoring the youth and scanning the room. “Excellent. An excellent job. Very good.” He looked around, seeming like a man just getting his bearings again. “Very good indeed. You’ve done well. Now come along.”

The master mage bolted for the door, pulled himself up short, then turned. “Are you coming?”

Khadgar felt as if he had been hit by another mystic bolt. “Coming? Where are we going?”

“To the top,” said Medivh curtly. “Come now or we’ll be too late. Time is of the essence!”

For an older man Medivh moved swiftly up the stairs, covering them two at a time at a brisk pace.

“What’s at the top?” gasped Khadgar, finally catching up at a landing near the top.

“Transport,” snapped Medivh, then hesitated for a moment. He turned in place and his shoulders

dropped. For a moment it looked like the fire had burned out of his eyes. “I must apologize.

For back there.”

“Sir?” said Khadgar, his mind now spinning with this new transformation.

“My memory is not what it once was, Young Trust,” said the Magus. “I should have remembered you were in the tower. With everything, I assumed you must have been a…”

“Sir?” interrupted Khadgar. “Time is of the essence?”

“Time,” said Medivh, then he nodded, and the intensity returned to his face. “Yes, it is. Come on, don’t lollygag!” And with that the older man was up on his feet and taking the steps two at a time.

Khadgar realized that the haunted tower and the disorganized library were not the only reason people left Medivh’s employ, and hastened after him.

The aged castellan was waiting for them in the tower observatory.

“Moroes,” thundered Medivh as he arrived at the top of the tower. “The golden whistle, if you please.”

“Ayep,” said the servant, producing a thin cylinder. Dwarven runes were carved along the cylinder’s side, reflecting in the lamplight of the room. “Already took the liberty, sir. They’re here.”