The Destruction of the Books (40 page)

Juhg pushed his thought from that line of inquiry. He did not have enough information, though he felt certain the Grandmagister knew far more than he was telling. The fear that had showed on the Grandmagister’s face at the time the gate opened had also held knowledge of inevitability. The attack hadn’t been as unexpected to the Grandmagister as it should have.

Over the years, Juhg had learned that the Grandmagister held his own counsel and kept his own secrets from those who lived on Greydawn Moors. Juhg had even known Grandmagister Lamplighter to keep secrets from him, ones from before they had become acquainted and ones that the Grandmagister had kept concealed even during their journeys.

With dedicated commitment, Juhg turned his attention to the efforts taking place around the ruins of the Library. Whatever secrets the Grandmagister held, Juhg knew from experience that Grandmagister Lamplighter would never reveal them until he was ready.

The task before the Librarians, Juhg knew, was almost impossible. When the Vault of All Known Knowledge had first been constructed, armies and navies had shipped the books to the island. Thousands of people had been involved in the transportation.

Now that job of rescuing all that remained salvageable was left to the forty-seven Librarians who survived the attack, and the dwarves, humans, and elves who came up from the forest and from Greydawn Moors to help. Only a few dwellers had made the trip up the mountain. The Grandmagister had spoken vehemently to those he’d sent to secure help from the town, reminding them of the debt their ancestors had incurred on their behalf all those years ago. Only a few more had come, token laborers gathered from the young sons of the town’s dweller merchant class.

Juhg had wanted to stay and help with the reclamation effort, but the Grandmagister had ordered him to continue working on the book. With a sigh, Juhg cut a fresh quill and turned to a fresh page in his personal journal. Working swiftly and surely, feeling only a twinge every now and again in his fingers from the constant time he’d spent at the task after once more stretching them out, he captured the image of the Library as it now stood.

He wasn’t to that part in the book yet. At the rate he was working, if he could keep up the effort, he wouldn’t reach the point of the afternoon’s labors until the day after tomorrow.

The Grandmagister had seemed pleased with the progress he was making. After flipping through the pages for just an instant, doing no more than giving them a casual perusal, the Grandmagister had handed the book back, pronounced the effort a worthwhile endeavor, and told Juhg to continue working on the project.

The Grandmagister had freed Juhg from the salvage operations. That decision, even though it was the Grandmagister’s, hadn’t set well with the other Librarians. Of course, they couldn’t be mad at the Grandmagister for that, but they could be mad at Juhg.

And they were. Juhg was painfully aware of that, even if the Grandmagister wasn’t or simply chose for the moment to ignore that. Juhg knew his chosen departure from Greydawn Moors to ship aboard
Windchaser
had distanced him from the other Librarians. He’d willingly chosen not to be one of them. Then he’d returned and brought “the cursed book.” That was what they were calling the trap-laden volume. He’d already overheard a few of them talking about the book that way.

“Cursed book. Cursed book and the cursed mainlander dweller who came in with it.”

First Level Librarian Randorr Cotspin had survived the attacks. Probably by hiding beneath his bed, Juhg believed, though he didn’t begrudge the other Librarian his health. However, now Randorr was the chief proponent among the Librarians who spoke beneath their breaths against Juhg and the Grandmagister’s decision to have him working on the Library book project instead of helping them to salvage books.

For himself, Juhg longed to be gone from the Library, far away from the Knucklebones Mountains and away from Greydawn Moors. But he couldn’t leave while the Grandmagister needed him. And he couldn’t leave until he’d properly told the story of how the Library was destroyed. Left in the hands of a Librarian other than the Grandmagister, Juhg felt certain he would be named and vilified as the cause for all the deaths and loss. Despite the fact that he was willing to leave the Library, pushed by his own reasons, he didn’t want to let someone else write the history of the attack and judge him harshly for his part in the unfortunate events.

At least, Juhg told himself, he couldn’t leave at this moment. But later, after the book was finished and the Grandmagister accepted his efforts, Juhg planned to be gone the first chance he got.

Watching the ruins of the Library, having to capture the images in the book the Grandmagister had given him to work on, was almost too much. He didn’t have many good memories of his younger years. With the Library’s destruction, he felt an emptiness inside, as though they were being stripped away.

Juhg had put some thoughts and sketches into his personal journal for later reference because he’d wanted to capture those ideas and images in the moment they occurred, rather than try to reconstruct them later. The duplication of effort slowed him somewhat, but he knew from past experience that he’d be better able to write what he needed to when the time came to do that.

A tern cawed behind Juhg, drawing his attention for a moment.

There, in a crevice behind him and to his left, a nest of baby terns made up of twigs, grasses, and small pebbles sat in the shadows. Their world, Juhg thought, wouldn’t change because of the damage that had been done to the Library. They would continue to live and mature and raise nestlings of their own that would one day do the same.

But that isn’t necessarily true.

The realization trickled through Juhg and brought fatigue and dismay. Craugh had said that enemies would come one day, now that the attack had taken place.

Those enemies certainly numbered goblinkin among them. And once goblinkin chose to destroy a people and a place, the creatures destroyed everything. Goblins knew no other way to behave. Several towns that had held out against Lord Kharrion’s forces and had cost several goblinkin lives had been put to death to the last male, female, and child.

The goblinkin had poured salt and foul corpse drudge (a jelly made from the bodies of their victims combined with toxic mushrooms and poisons) into the earth where those towns had stood before the houses and meeting halls had burned to the ground. In some of those places, even hundreds of years later, vegetation had still not returned.

If the goblinkin learned where Greydawn Moors was, if they learned that the Library was there, Juhg had no doubt they would travel there to destroy the island and all who lived there.

He looked to the west, out into the fog-shrouded expanse of the Blood-Soaked Sea. To the north, ships filled the harbor at Greydawn Moors. Pirate vessels as well as fat-bodied merchant vessels shared harbor space. Several members of those crews had journeyed up the mountain to help with the Library. Of all the peoples who knew of Greydawn Moors and the secrets held upon the island, only those who served as contacts with the mainland and stood as defenders against potential discovery showed the greatest allegiance to the Vault of All Known Knowledge.

But the presence of those sailors here leaves the harbor unprotected. And it leaves the sea unpatrolled.

The island’s greatest defense had lain in the fact that no one knew it existed. That was gone. Whether or not the Dread Riders and Grymmlings knew where the island was, the powers behind them knew of its existence now. After seeing the efforts the unknown enemies had gone to, in order to destroy the Library, Juhg felt certain that they wouldn’t give up trying to finish what they had started.

Unless they believe the Library is already destroyed.

Quick as that thought entered Juhg’s thoughts, he pushed it right out again. Craugh’s magic had shattered the spell. Whoever—or
what
ever—had crafted the spell, had opened the gateway, and had marshaled the armies of Dread Riders and Grymmlings had to know that someone had closed the gateway.

No doubt existed that another attack would take place. Only the amount of time between those attacks remained unknown.

Juhg turned his attention back to his work. The quill slid smoothly across the paper, despite the erratic jumping of his thoughts and the certain fear that vibrated within him.

*   *   *

The book took Juhg nine days to write, three days longer than the Grandmagister had expected. Thankfully, Grandmagister Lamplighter chose to be satisfied with the extra effort and time rather than remonstrate about it.

Juhg had slept only when he could no longer keep his eyes open. Even those times were brief because nightmares chased him awake again nearly immediately every time.

During those days and nights, Juhg occupied himself with nothing more than writing. He wrote with his right hand and his left, utilizing the seldom-seen skill of ambidexterity that he possessed.

In the goblinkin mines, he had learned to swing a pickaxe and use a shovel with either hand. Although those tasks normally required the use of both hands, he had taught himself to use either hand to guide the effort. Also, picking out gemstones from broken rock required both hands. And sometimes, one hand or the other had been injured, through work or torture. The goblinkin had relished inflicting pain, although they weren’t supposed to disable the slaves. Sometimes they had killed victims too injured to work the next day and told their supervisors that the weak dwellers had died rather than be held accountable for their actions.

After handing in the book, Juhg had turned to helping with the excavation of the surviving collections. Often, he’d ended up working alone, foraging down deep into the Library’s cavernous depths to bring out particular volumes the Grandmagister assigned him to find. The work was disheartening. So much had been destroyed. His best estimate at present was that the Vault of All Known Knowledge had lost nearly four books out of five, an astonishing percentage.

Even as prepared for the amount of destruction facing the Library as he’d thought he had been, Juhg felt hammered by the devastation and despair that hung over the place where he had spent the only truly good years he had known. Being ostracized by the other Librarians—and the Grandmagister’s uncharacteristic ignorance of the matter—further weighed on Juhg.

If not for Raisho, who came and went while running errands for the Grandmagister, Juhg would have been totally bereft of friendship. As it was, Raisho was gone nearly as often as he was around. When Raisho did manage to visit, other Librarians always seemed to interrupt them so much so that Juhg could barely have a decent conversation with his friend. There was simply too much work to be done.

There was, Juhg reflected grimly as he sat along the western wall of the Library’s outer courtyard, more friendship offered among dwellers in a goblinkin mine slave chain gang than at the Vault of All Known Knowledge. The ill treatment and pointed disdain offered by the other Librarians, headed up by Randorr Cotspin, proved almost more than Juhg could bear.

Through it all, the Grandmagister never seemed to take notice of his ill treatment at the hands of the other Librarians.

The only bright spot on the horizon was the news Raisho had brought Juhg two days ago that
Windchaser
was deemed seaworthy enough to once more venture out into the Blood-Soaked Sea. Even the Grandmagister’s attentions had finally been drawn from the Library’s book salvaging project to the fact that the Blood-Soaked Sea was going unpatrolled.

When
Windchaser
hoisted anchor and put out to sea, Juhg had every intention of being aboard her. At least, he’d feel more at home among the “pirates” watching the waves for any sign of an enemy fleet.

He ate sparingly of the plate he’d taken from the Library’s kitchens. None of the food really had any taste, but he’d learned from his time in the goblinkin mines that meals were not to be missed. For the present, the Grandmagister had the workers on scheduled shifts.

Precious little time between those shifts was allowed for sleep. All the salvage workers neared exhaustion, but now and again a book survived—a remembered favorite of one of the Librarians, or a tome someone had been intending to read, or, most exciting of all, a book that still yet remained to be catalogued or interpreted—that set off a flurry of excitement and renewal of the rescue operation. Unfortunately, those occasions became fewer and fewer.

A group of Novices, their white robes now dirty and torn, sat beneath a cometberry tree that showed white flesh where limbs had been torn off during the attack on the Library. In spite of all the damage, in spite of the fog that clung to the Knucklebones Mountains, bright white and orange flowers with green centers blossomed among the dark green leaves that had survived the harsh treatment.

In a few more weeks, the flowers would produce cometberries, thumb-sized fruits all the colors of a rainbow and possessing the distinct elongated black hoods that grew nowhere else that Juhg knew of. The elven warders who first arrived to care for the Vault of All Known Knowledge and the town that later grew there had transplanted the cometberry trees. The trees stood as physical proof of the promise the elves had made to protect the Library and the Librarians who cared for it.

Chewing his meal, not truly enjoying the food, Juhg listened to the poetry the Novices took turns reading. The volume was one of Haragis the Blind’s efforts.

In his time, Haragis had lived a fierce life as a sellsword between warring nations, a human who had spent forty years combatting the foes of those he was paid to fight. He rose from the ranks to become a warrior of renown, a commander of armies, and—finally—the king of a small nation of mercenaries who had carved out a place to raise their families while they fought and died in other lands.

During his rule, Haragis had written many books. He’d learned to read while studying to become a general. His earliest efforts had been accounts of battles he had fought in, of wars he had waged. Then he had turned his attention to volumes of martial arts, of learning the strength of one’s own mind and body, then of learning to lead first small groups of men, then armies. Up until the violent and confusing time of the Cataclysm, Haragis’ books remained among those most studied by military leaders.