The Wicked Day (42 page)

“But this is fantastic,” said Jute, his eyes shining. “Severan will be delighted. Don’t you know he’s spent his entire life trying to find this book?”

“Did you say Severan?” said the duke.

“That would be a bad idea,” said the ghost, looking alarmed. “For one thing, this book’ll draw the Dark like iron to a magnet. At least, once it’s taken off the shelf. I wove a very powerful spell into the shelf that masks the book, but once removed—ah—I’m afraid you’d have a disaster on your hands. They want what’s inside, don’t you know? It’s all coming back to me. That’s why that villain Scuadimnes came to the university in the first place. He was trying to find the
Gerecednes
. It’s not a book you just pick up and read, mind you. Most people wouldn’t be able to resist picking the thing up. Once you open the book, however, you can’t help but read the whole thing. It would take more than a hundred years to finish. Perhaps several hundred years. Maybe even more than that.”

“What? It’s that long? It doesn’t look at all thick.”

“It’s not that,” said the ghost. “Something happened when I wrote it. I can’t remember exactly why. Perhaps it was due to the fact that the words I used were so old. They’re almost the original language. At least, close enough to be dangerous. They don’t behave the same way your modern words do, particularly when there's a lot of 'em together. They contain more truth. Once you start reading, you’re caught. And, while you’re reading, time slows down, er, rather dramatically. I suppose I should’ve just written in a different language. Not to mention the fact that some of those words are dreadfully powerful.”

“Hadn’t we better get a move on?” said Rane, frowning. He looked back down the tunnel, past the torchlight, as if he could somehow see through the shadows and into the distance. “The longer we stay here, the closer our enemy gets. I don’t fancy another run-in with that hound and its master.”

“Perfect!” said Jute.

“There’s nothing perfect about it. How do you fight something that keeps on disappearing into nothing?”

“Not that,” said Jute. “Don’t you see? If this book truly draws the Dark, why don’t we simply leave it lying on the floor here? Along comes our sceadu, he picks it up, and there! You’ve got him. He’ll be reading for hundreds and hundreds of years. He'll be trapped. That is, if you’re telling the truth, ghost.”

The ghost looked at him coldly. “Of course I’m telling the truth.”

After some heated discussion, they decided to try it. However, the ghost suggested that the entire group proceed a good way down the tunnel first. “It wouldn’t do,” it said, “to have one of you develop a sudden urge to pick the blasted book up.” The duke volunteered to move the book from the shelf to the floor.

“If you don’t mind,” he said slowly.

They waited for him further down the tunnel, a few minutes walk. The men stood in silence. The torchlight shone on their weary faces. Rane gnawed at his lip, staring back into the darkness.

“He’s taking too long,” said the ghost suddenly. “Much too long. I’m very sorry.”

“I’ll go back,” said Jute.

“No! Wait!” said the ghost, but Jute was already gone.

Jute hurried back through the passage, holding his torch high. Sweat trickled down his neck. The shadows were changing around him. They were full of menace, watching and waiting. The only sounds he could hear were the whisper of his footsteps and his heart pulsing in his blood. But somewhere beyond that, too quiet to be heard, he knew there was something else. The sceadu. Silently ghosting along through the blackness. Not needing light. Eyes blindly turning toward Jute, wherever he was. Getting closer. After a minute, he saw the duke of Harlech. The old man was standing in the middle of the passageway. He could see the book in the man’s hands.

“Sir!” he said, his voice low and urgent. “Sir! Are you all right? We need to leave.”

The duke did not answer. Jute stepped in front of him and saw that his eyes were fixed on the book on his hands. The book was closed, but the duke was staring at the cover. It was then that Jute heard something whispering on the edge of his mind. The book. The voice was quiet and conversational, not unlike the ghost’s voice. A pleasant voice. But there was sorrow in it as well, as if it looked back over hundreds of years and found more to regret than to rejoice over. The voice spoke in words that blurred into colors and distance, into images that slowly gained clarity in Jute’s mind. He stopped, caught by the voice and what he could suddenly see.

An ocean under the rising sun with light blazing on the water, shimmering in the blue depths, bursting across the sky, burning away the purple darkness of the fleeing night. A hundred ships in flight. West, always west. Sails ragged and patched, bellied out, full with the wind. The water surging white with foam against every prow. Dolphins, slick and silver, dancing between the boundary of sea and sky. Smiling their toothy grins as if to confirm the blessing of the Lady of the Sea. But there had been no land in sight for six weeks. The drinking water barrels were half empty. The bread was almost gone.

We hoped
, whispered the voice in Jute’s mind.

We could only hope.

The nights with a thousand thousand stars drifting in their courses above us. Shining like a thousand thousand lamps. They reflected on the darkness of the sea. Both were equally lovely, for both were equally true, like a word and the reality it describes. Night after night turned into day, and day after day turned into night. And on the last day, the wind brought us to a new land. The barren shores. Stone and dust and the hard desert light. We burned our ships under that fierce light, a light so fierce and bright that the flames leaping from the ship timbers roared up toward the sun. A reflection, like the stars drifting upon the ocean of night.

Again, the wind pointed west. Across the wastelands toward a green and pleasant land. Tormay. To a land unknown. To a land promised in dreams. The wind carried its scent across the miles and days. The dark was not there.

The dark.

The dark was not there yet.

With a shudder, Jute came out of his reverie. The duke still stood motionless in front of him, the book in his hands. Further down the corridor, right at the edge of Jute’s sight, the shadows trembled. He could smell something foul in the air. Something approaching.

“Sir,” said Jute. “You must put down the book. Now.”

But the duke did not respond, and the darkness in the corridor drew closer. Jute could hear the sound of footsteps. He wrenched the book from the duke’s hands and the man trembled. He blinked. His hand fell on his sword, but then he came awake.

“Was I?” said the duke, but he could not finish.

“Yes,” said Jute. “Quickly. We have only a few seconds or we’re lost.”

Jute placed the book on the floor in the middle of the corridor and then, grasping Lannaslech’s arm, urged the old man away. They only made it a few steps before a voice spoke behind them.

“Are you going to run forever, Jute?”

The sceadu’s voice was quiet. He moved out of the shadows and into the edge of Jute’s torchlight. The expressionless eyes stared at the boy and the old duke. Jute could hear Lannaslech breathing shallowly beside him. The shadowhound crouched at the sceadu’s feet, a blot of darkness with the barest hint of a dog’s form. There were other things behind them, things in the shadows; they did not move, but simply waited.

“No,” said Jute, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “I was never running. I was just waiting for the right time.”

“And this is the right time?” The sceadu’s head tilted to one side, as if he sought to examine Jute from a different angle. He took a step forward. The air seemed to have gone cold in the passageway. “Death is not a difficult thing. It’s an easy thing, as quick as a passing thought. That’s how I’ve always found it. Tell me, Jute. Shall I set my beast free, or shall it be the sword?”

The shadowhound heaved itself to its feet as if in anticipation. For a dreadful moment, Jute froze. The shadowhound. He had not considered it. Presumably, it would not stop to consider a book lying on the floor. It would simply leap for his throat, and that would be the end.

The duke’s sword rang free from its sheath.

“I don’t doubt you let your dog do your fighting,” he drawled, his voice contemptuous. “In Harlech, only the men ride to war.”

A blade appeared in the sceadu’s hand. The shadowhound sat back down on its haunches with a disappointed grunt.

“A Harlech lord and a whelp of an anbeorun,” said the sceadu. A ghastly smile crossed his face. “I’ll enjoy this.”

One more step
, thought Jute, trying not to turn and run.

The sceadu paused, as if he had read Jute’s mind. But then he stepped forward, almost right on the book. He paused and looked down. He stooped to pick up the book. Opened it. His face froze, eyes intent on the page. Jute could hear the whisper from the book. The same voice, but stronger and clearer now. Words as clear and as pristine as the snowmelt of a mountain stream, as pure as the first edge of morning’s light.

This is the
Gerecednes.
Hear my words, o stranger, for they are true. I bore witness to the truth, that it might be remembered. That it might be recorded as it was once was and always shall be. My name is Staer Gemyndes.

Jute and the duke of Harlech turned and fled away into the darkness. No one followed. Behind them, the voice whispered on and on, and it seemed it would surely have no end. The torchlight flickered and bobbed around them, a cocoon of light that kept them safe within its sphere. Dust stirred around their footsteps.

“I almost opened it,” said the duke, his face white. “Almost. I think I would have if you hadn’t come along. Thank you for coming back. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve heard of the
Gerecednes
. The first Lord Lannaslech built a library at our manor, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Every duke since has added to it. I added quite a few during my day. My grandfather used to say that there were certain books, even certain single words, that were more powerful than an army of swords. The books of the wizards, of the ancient seafarers and the old kings, they all held secrets from the past. But the writings of Staer Gemyndes towered like an invisible mountain behind all of them. He recorded actual words of the first language, the language of Anue. He spoke with dragons. And, it was said, he was a friend of the anbeorun. To think that your ghost is one and the same. I’ve still half a mind to think him a liar.”

“Liar or not,” said Jute, “that book was real. I could feel it reaching into my mind.”

“Yes.” The duke sighed, and then shuddered.

They rounded a corner and found the men waiting for them. The ghost looked mournfully at Jute.

“Did you leave it?” said the ghost.

“Yes. Barely.” Jute shuddered. “I could hear your voice speaking from the book, even though we didn’t open it. The sceadu almost reached us, but he picked it up. How—why did you write it?”

“I’ll explain one day.” The ghost sighed. “I should never have written it, but perhaps it was intended to save us today? One hundred years. Two hundred, three hundred years? Perhaps more. And then what’ll happen? He’ll finish the book.”

No one had anything to say to that. The ghost vanished into Jute’s cloak. They continued on through the darkness and silence. The further they went, the more relieved Jute became. The tension in his neck relaxed and he no longer looked over his shoulder every minute. Hearne. They were nearing Hearne, and there they would be safe. At least, safe for a time.

They came to an ornately carved arch in the tunnel. Stone pillars fashioned to resemble trees on either wall rose up and joined their branches along the roof. Squirrels peered down from among the leaves. An owl regarded them gravely from its perch. A fox crouched at the foot of one tree.

“That’s odd,” said Jute to himself. “I don’t remember this when we were escaping the wihht.”

Uncertain, he stopped. The men of Harlech halted behind him. Jute took a step forward, holding his torch high. The light fell on the dusty carvings. A raven stared down from one branch. It looked dreadfully lifelike, but it was not. Could not be. He could see a chip in the stone of its beak. Jute hesitated. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps it was only his nerves. He needed the sky. He needed to be out from underneath all this stone.

Someone sneezed behind him.

The raven blinked its stone eyes. They focused on Jute. And the ward in the stone arch came alive before the sound of the sneeze finished. It lashed out quicker than thought, quicker than the first ray of sunlight reaching across the morning sky to the opposite end of the world. It was implacable. It was woven only to destroy. To annihilate.

Jute had even less time to react. His mind flashed open wide. It opened like a door taller than the sky and wider than the horizon. Taller and wider than the stone passage he stood motionless in. The ward slammed into him and found only sky. Only the silent emptiness with the stars watching safely from their impossible distances. The words of the ward unwove, negated, stripped the material of being down to something older than existence. But it had only the sky upon which to unleash its power. Only the sky to unmake, and the sky cannot be reduced to anything less than what it is, for the sky is only light and darkness and time. The ward flashed through Jute’s mind. It did not slacken in speed or power. It was as if it sought to strike at some object in some impossibly distant place, beyond the stars.