The Destruction of the Books (44 page)

“The goblinkin targeted those places then. Not now.” Juhg drew in a breath.

“And they would again,” the wizard said. “Those times haven’t changed as much as you seem to want to think they have.”

“They set a trap for us with a book, Craugh. Something has changed.”

“The goblinkin didn’t do that.”

Juhg waited. When it became apparent the wizard was not going to go on, he asked, “Then who did?”

“You’ll need to talk to your master, apprentice. As I told you, that isn’t my story to tell.”

Frustration chafed at Juhg. He wanted nothing more than to walk away. But he couldn’t do that; not as long as a chance remained that he might learn more.

Craugh stamped his feet for a moment, obviously deep in thought. His voice was soft when he spoke. “I will tell you this: Fear of the goblinkin wasn’t the only reason the books continued to be held in the Vault of All Known Knowledge.”

Juhg waited, but he sensed that the wizard was going to do his best to make the situation no clearer than it had been. The friendship between the Grandmagister and Craugh ran too deep. So deep that Craugh had stepped over several boundaries by talking to Juhg in the first place, threatening him in the second, and third by continuing to attempt to reason with him. For whatever reason, the wizard saw Juhg’s continued presence as beneficial to the Grandmagister and was willing to strive to make that happen.

“You have to remember,” Craugh said, “all of those books were hauled pell-mell to this place. Without plans, without organization. Those salvagers operated under the threat of death. If they were caught by the goblinkin, they were put to horrible deaths. The island was lifted from the sea bottom and caverns formed, then structures built over them. Chests and boxes and bags of books were dumped into those places. Ships arrived, on occasion, several times in a single day. The work was just too immense to keep up with. There was no rhyme, no reason. Just a great evacuation of books from the mainland.” He drew in a breath. “Centuries passed before we even knew all that we had managed to save. You saw some of that in your earliest tenure here.”

Juhg remembered the vast caverns of books, the large rooms that awaited organized and orderly books that would be placed on carefully constructed shelves. He didn’t have to imagine what the Vault of All Known Knowledge had been like in those early days. Every Grandmagister, from the first to Edgewick Lamplighter, had written of and illustrated images of the chaos that had been their lot to make tidy and known.

“We didn’t have the luxury of transporting many multiple copies,” Craugh said. “We only hoped that we were able to save a copy of each book. At least that.” He gazed at Juhg. “And how could we allow those books back out of our possession until the Librarians knew what it was they had? Until the Grandmagister knew and could pass judgment on such an action? Knowing that we might never see its like again? Or that the goblinkin might hear of a community getting its books back, its libraries returned, only to go into that town and destroy those books—as well as those people?” He remained quiet for a moment.

Juhg returned the wizard’s flat gaze with difficulty.

“What choice would you have made in those days, apprentice? Would you have given those books back? After warriors had come together from all walks of life to fight and shed blood for those books that most people never truly understood or cared for?”

Juhg made himself answer. “I don’t know. Truly, I don’t, Craugh. But I don’t question what was done then. I only question how things are progressing now.”

“Would you see a book leave this Library that we did not have a copy of? Do you know how many, how
much,
we have already lost?” The wizard glanced toward the broken back of the Knucklebones Mountains, where the ridgeline had collapsed in on itself and created the deep pit that plunged into the mountains. “Can you even fathom how much I destroyed only a few days ago?”

Shaking his head, Juhg said, “No.”

“Then how dare you take umbrage with your master for the things he chooses to do, apprentice. His responsibility for the protection of this place and those books has not been easy. He’s been the only Grandmagister to ever leave the safety of this island and journey along the mainland questing after books and rumors of books. As such, he’s seen terrible things. Horrible things. Things that most dwellers from Greydawn Moors never see.”

But I’m not from this island,
Juhg thought angrily.
My whole life, until I arrived here, I was surrounded with those things. Murder and cruelty and depravations. That was my world. And that is the world the mainlanders live in.

In that instant, Craugh seemed to recall that Juhg was an outsider as well. The wizard’s fiery gaze softened, then turned away. An uncomfortable silence descended between them.

After a time, only so the wizard might finish whatever he had to say, Juhg said, “I … I am not proud of my dissatisfaction with the way things have been going here.” He knew that he wasn’t. Disagreeing with the Grandmagister was possibly the most futile, unpleasant, and disloyal thing he could envision.

Craugh replied, “Nor should you be,” but his remark wasn’t as cutting as it might have been.

“That’s why I tried to leave. I knew that someday I would have this very same conversation with the Grandmagister. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or our friendship.” Juhg stared at the ruins of the Library, but his mind was on the Grandmagister. “The Grandmagister would never be able to understand why I feel the way that I do.”

“I think Wick understands his station in life perfectly. He was supposed to protect all that was held dear here.”

“But he held the Library
here,
” Juhg pointed out in a quiet voice, “all in one place. That was a mistake. He made the collections more vulnerable than they would have been scattered around the mainland.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I felt it,” Juhg said. “Even before this, I felt it. All the goblinkin had to do was find this place and they could destroy everything that has been protected.” He glanced at Craugh. “You’ve read Motherby’s
Concordance of War
?”

Craugh hesitated, then nodded. “Of course.”

“What is the first principle of protecting people or things?”

Sighing as understanding filled him, Craugh said, “Not to keep them all in one place.”

“‘Separating multiple targets makes it harder for an enemy to get at them,’” Juhg said, quoting from the book. “‘Your enemy will be harried trying to find all the targets, and will be exposed during his efforts to gather information about those targets or to eliminate all of the targets.’”

“Yes. But we chose to hide everything in a place that we shaped,” Craugh said. “A place that was not known to exist.”

“Hidden things don’t remain hidden.”

“We didn’t hide something the goblinkin knew about.”

“You hid the books.”

“In a place that had never before been part of the world. We were careful, and we were clever.”

“Towwart has an axiom about such things,” Juhg said. “‘Even an omission leaves a noticeable trail; a hole, a vacuum, an occlusion that marks the deliberate loss or the crafted lie.’”

“Towwart’s Forensics of the Discussions and Negotiations of Kings and Princes and Skilled Liars,”
Craugh said. “I know the book.”

“Even with all the precautions you and the Founders took, the goblinkin knew the books existed somewhere.”

“Not
knew,
apprentice. Perhaps they suspected.”

Juhg glanced pointedly at the ruins of the Library. “Someone did more than suspect.”

Craugh said nothing.

“You stripped away the books from the mainland and hid them here, but you did more than that. You took away the history of the races that survived the Cataclysm.” Juhg looked at the wizard. “They needed that history, Craugh. They needed it so they could go on. While Lord Kharrion existed, they could exist. They had survival as a goal, and an enemy that interferred with their lives. After he was gone—they had nothing.”

“We saved them,” Craugh said.

“Only partially. Only for a time. Those people on the mainland have become frozen. They don’t grow and they don’t develop. They exist and they die. With the encroaching goblinkin, they exist with harder and meaner lives, and they die much sooner. They need what they once had. History is like a river to a civilization. It comes from one place so the people living now will have momentum, a map of where they have been and vague ideas of where they will go next.”

Full dark steeped the gardens now. Dozens of soft glows from the lanterns gathered inside the Library courtyard burned against the soft, sable blanket laid over the land.

“Stop anywhere along a river,” Juhg continued, knowing he had Craugh’s full attention, “and you can pick up residue—sand or flotsam—from other places the river has touched. Put something in the river there, and someone else downriver later may find it. Even when the river runs into the sea and passes out into the deeper oceans, the sun evaporates the water and clouds carry it back to the land to begin the journey all over again.”

Craugh scowled. “I don’t need a lesson in the life cycle of water, apprentice.”

“It’s not about water,” Juhg said, feeling bad and frustrated that the wizard somehow couldn’t see what was so plainly in front of his face. “It’s about knowledge. The life cycle of water was just the best representation I could think of for what I’m trying to explain.”

“Well, your explanation is hardly necessary. Despite your beliefs, I am not thickheaded.”

“No,” Juhg agreed. “I know you understand everything I’m talking about. What I want to call to your attention is the fact that you are so blind to what I am trying to explain.”

He took a deep breath, surprised at how tense he was. But surprised, even more so, that he wasn’t a toad.

Craugh pinned Juhg with a wary eye. Grumbling beneath his breath, the wizard turned and gazed over the garden. “You pose a compelling argument, apprentice.”

The term of address galled Juhg. After everything he’d just said, the wizard still insisted on stripping him of rank or respect.

“It’s more than an argument,” Juhg said. “It’s the truth.”

“As you see fit to view it.”

“Craugh,” Juhg said, “the dwarves, elves, and humans are losing the mainland. More and more dwellers get chained as slaves every day. The goblinkin have forced the settlements of the dwarves, elves, and humans to spread out of the South, where the better farmlands are. Their lives are becoming more hardscrabble and desperate. And the goblinkin press on to the north. Soon, very soon, the clans will control all the coastal lands. Once they control the land they will control access to the sea. Do you know what will happen then?”

“We will fight them back.”

“And if we can’t? There is no one to raise a mighty army now. No single foe to unite all of those races.”

“The human, dwarves, and elves will retreat to the center of the mainland,” Craugh said. “There still remain places where they can live and prosper.”

“For how long?”

“You vex me, apprentice, with your constant badgering of what may come to pass.”

Normally, the wizard’s protest would have given Juhg pause. But he somehow couldn’t stop himself, now that he had opened the matter up. “But don’t you see what will happen if the elves, dwarves, and humans retreat to the interior of the mainland?”

“They will live and grow again,” Craugh said. “And they will probably band together to battle the goblinkin.”

“By then it will be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

Juhg opened his hands to take in the immediate area. “For this place. For the Library. For Greydawn Moors. For the island.”

Craugh said nothing, but Juhg could tell the wizard was bothered.

“Greydawn Moors has come to depend on trade from the mainland,” Juhg said. “The population here, although the elven warders have done everything within their powers, has grown beyond the ability of the island’s farms and fishing beds to provide for. If you take away the trade with the mainland, everyone here will starve.”

“Especially the dwellers.” Craugh scowled then shook his head. “I mean nothing personal, apprentice.”

Juhg nodded and tried very hard not to take it personally. When the Founders had first laid down the design for Greydawn Moors and the Vault of All Known Knowledge, they had made allowances for the populations inhabiting the island. Humans took to the seas and seldom stayed. Only the elves and dwarves needed to manage the defenses and the lands remained.

But the dwellers had stayed and multiplied and packed the town till it burgeoned. Dwellers had big families, big appetites, and tendencies not to think beyond the current day.

The dwellers, those folk who had been given the purpose in life of maintaining the Library, of reading and writing and caring for the books, had become the internal threat to the island.

“Yes,” Juhg said. “The dwellers have become a liability.”

“Yet without them, there are no Librarians.”

“Few Librarians,” Juhg corrected. Although humans had generally served as Grandmagisters in the past, few wanted a life spent among books. Fewer still of the dwarves and elves wanted that kind of life. Dwellers lived long, cautious lives.

“You pose a great number of problems, apprentice.”

“Yes,” Juhg replied, “but they are real.”

Craugh paced back and forth, his staff thumping the ground and squirting green embers. “You should have told Wick.”

“I tried. I brought it up in conversations. I wrote monographs on the subject. He denied the problems and he filed the monographs without reading them.”

“And no one else read them?”

“No.” Juhg grimaced. “As you may have noticed, I am not well liked here. That was another reason I had decided to leave.”

“You are not well liked by your fellow Librarians for one reason only,” Craugh said. “You are Wick’s favorite. And he chose you to take over this place in the event of his death.”

Craugh’s pronouncement surprised Juhg. He didn’t know what to say.