The Destruction of the Books

Book 2: The Rover

by Mel Odom

Genres: Epic Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Sword & Sorcery

Synopsis

Mel Odom's award winning quest fantasy The Rover was hailed as a successor to the legacy of Tolkien and Terry Brooks. The tale of "Wick" the lowly librarian who rises to the occasion and becomes a great adventurer struck a chord with adventure lovers and fantasy fans alike.

After his adventures on the mainland Wick returned to his duties at the Vault of All Known Knowledge and quickly worked his way up the hierarchy , continuing his quest for the preservation of books and the knowledge contained therein.

And now that quest is threatened.

The Destruction of the Books

It is many years later and lowly Wick is now Grandmagister Lamplighter of the Great Library. His trips to the mainland are fewer due to his advanced age, and lately he has enlisted an assistant by the name of Jugh to undertake those roving duties he used to relish.

An encounter with a goblin ship on the high seas leads to Jugh's discovery of a book in goblin hands, a most matter that must be investigated.

This single event leads to startling revelations that forewarns of a great evil that exists that is every bit as powerful as the Vault of All Known Knowledge, and whose presence in the Great Library may indeed result in

The Destruction of the Books

And perhaps far worse.



At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Release date: May 14, 2013

Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Print pages: 384

Sample

1

Kelloch's Harbor


ere now! What'd ye think ye're a-doin' with yerself?"
Startled by the booming voice that penetrated even the raucous nightly crowing and lying of the sailors and cargo handlers that filled the Broken Tiller, Juhg looked up. His hands moved automatically to close the journal he'd been working in. Just as rapidly, for he had learned to be quick of hand if he wanted to eat or go unpunished among the goblin slavers that had once owned him, he shifted the handmade book beneath the plate that still held half his dinner. The dim oil lanterns and tallow candles that lit the tavern created long and deep shadows that aided his efforts.
Raisho, a young sailor of Windchaser-the ship Juhg currently sailed with-stood in front of the small table Juhg had taken at the back of the tavern. Raisho was human, an inch or two over six feet, and broad of shoulder from pulling oars and shifting cargo all of his life. At twenty years, he was young for an adult among his kind, and he still went smooth-shaven because he could not yet command a full beard. A red leather band festooned with osprey feathers held his unruly black hair back in a queue that left his forehead bare and trailed a ponytail to the base of his neck. The sun, wind, and weather had tanned his skin deep, supple warm ebony, save where it was marked with a seaman's indigo blue tattoos wishful of good luck. Lantern light glinted on the silver hoops he wore in both ears. His dark brown eyes sparkled with merriment at Juhg's reaction.
Although tall for a dweller, Juhg stood only a little more than half his friend's size. His fair hair and skin that still held the cherry glow of a newfound tan contrasted sharply. Raisho looked every inch a sailing man, while Juhg looked something like a miniature version of a merchant in the hand-tailored clothes that he took such care in. Except that no merchant was ever a dweller in the northern climes of the mainland.
Nor did any dweller know how to write. Fear trailed cat's claws across Juhg's shoulders. He swallowed hard.
Thankfully, no one in the loud tavern appeared to have noticed the young sailor's comments. The Broken Tiller lived up to its name as a place where men who fought the sea for a living gathered to spend their time in lazy circles of talking, drinking, and eating. Small and crowded by a low ceiling, the tavern had an earthen floor covered by crushed oyster shells that staved off most of the mud when the torrential rains that often wracked the coast came stealing in the light of day or the loneliness of night.
"You might warn someone when you were about to pounce on them," Juhg replied irritably.
Lowering his voice, Raisho said, "An' ye might want to give a thought that maybe ye ain't back on Greydawn Moors, or at the Vault, where dwellers read an' write an' such like it ain't nothin'."
Despite his embarrassment at being surprised, Juhg knew the young sailor was correct. Writing in the journal, even as compelling as the exercise had been and as active as his mind insisted on being, was a mistake. Juhg was a dweller, one of a race that had been enslaved by goblin slavers for centuries, even after the evil Lord Kharrion had been defeated by the combined remnants of armies made up of humans, elves, and dwarves.
The dwellers hadn't fought in those battles against Lord Kharrion and his goblin hordes. Dweller natures prevented them from massing for battle, as the gods had intended. The Old Ones had shaped dwellers to be survivors, and one of the greatest survival skills was cowardice. Still, the lack of effort for the dwellers' own freedom and lives had left rancorous feelings among the other peoples of the world.
"Were it not me," Raisho said, "an' were it a goblin what found ye a-scribblin' in that book, why, ye'd be drawn an' quartered an' thrown out into that muddy street what lies outside them doors."
"I know." Juhg took the book from under his plate and pocketed it in his worn gray traveling cloak.
He rolled the quill he'd been using back into the waterproof oilskin that he carried them in, keeping all the quills straight and orderly as his training dictated. He wasn't neat and orderly by nature; those skills had come from his training at the Great Library. Capping the inkwell he'd kept out of sight on the chair beside him, he put the small bottle into his pocket as well.
"Ye mind if I sit?" Raisho asked.
"I'm sorry. Please do." Juhg gestured to the other side of the table.
Raisho didn't find a chair immediately to hand. He glanced a little farther afield, then hooked a chair with a foot and yanked it over. He sat in the chair, taking care to shift the cutlass and long knife he wore at his hips. When he finished with his adjustments, both blades lay quick within reach.
"What are you doing here?" Juhg asked.
"Came to find ye."
"Why?"
"Wanted to share me good fortune with the one what was somewhat responsible fer it." Raisho rubbed his palms together. Calluses midwifed by long hours of handing ship's rigging and scraping barnacles rasped against each other.
Juhg raised his eyebrows. "Our good fortune, you mean?"
"Aye." Raisho nodded with good-natured reluctance. "Our good fortune, then."
Unable to keep either impatience or hope from his voice, Juhg finally gave up any attempt at feigning disinterest. After all, the purchases at the last port intended for sale here were primarily his suggestion based on independent reading he'd undertaken. "You sold our goods well?"
A broad white smile split Raisho's face. "Well enough, little bookworm. Well enough, indeed." The young sailor jingled a modest purse. The silvery tinkle of the coins inside sounded promising.
In spite of himself, Juhg's ears pricked and he began attempting to guess at their profits based on the clinks he heard. Much of those profits, he knew, depended on how well the Cheemantine blankets had brought in an unproven market.
"The blankets?" Juhg asked.
Raisho nodded. "Mighty cold up here, but people still have an eye fer fashion. As ye guessed."
Juhg smiled. Buying the blankets had been a gamble, and he felt satisfaction that the investment had paid off. Cheemantine blankets served to fight the chill of long winter nights, but each was uniquely made with patterns that were-reportedly, at least-not duplicated by the blanket makers. Even among the poor, hardscrabble environment of Kelloch's Harbor, Juhg had felt certain buyers would want individual things, items that others around them could not duplicate.
Raisho lifted a hand and drew the attention of a serving maid.
She was a young lass, dressed in a simple homespun gown, and quick to respond to the young sailor despite her tired eyes.
"Don't go around advertising your newfound wealth," Juhg cautioned. His innate dweller's nature to run and hide in the face of physical adversity rose to the surface. "Otherwise you'll lose that profit, and perhaps your very life, before you make it back to the ship."
Raisho grinned again. "Not without me bustin' a head or two, I won't."
"It could be that I would be with you. Kelloch's Harbor is not a safe place. This place is not a town built on trade. It's a waterhole filled with cutthroats and scoundrels." Juhg drummed his fingers on the leaning tabletop. Sometimes the young sailor chose to be very dense about inferred dialogue. Juhg felt uncomfortable with some direct conversations circumstances had forced him to have with his friend and fellow investor.
"Oh."
"And I cannot run nearly as fast as you can."
"I would stand an' fight at your side till the bitter end," Raisho promised. "I wouldn't leave ye there."
Juhg knew that Raisho meant what he said. Unfortunately, it would only mean the doom of us both. The dweller sighed, one of the acts that everyone accused dwellers of holding in common, a trait that all nondwellers lamented. Only dwellers, general opinion said, could issue such deeply piteous and heartfelt sighs.
The young sailor was an accomplished swordsman and practiced his chosen craft, in addition to his sailing, every chance he got. Upon occasion when events had forced Raisho to use his martial skills in Windchaser's defense against pirates or goblin ships, Juhg had complimented the young sailor on his bravery. Raisho had always said that Juhg was the bravest person he had ever known: a dweller who had left-by choice-the sequestered safety of Grey dawn Moors, a Librarian who had chosen to voyage back out into the rough-and-tumble world he'd barely escaped from.
The serving wench stood at Raisho's side and glanced at him demurely. "And what would you be after having, milord?"
"Milord!" Raisho laughed merrily and slapped his thigh.
The serving wench reddened at the young sailor's loud reaction. Others in the tavern turned to look, but found that no violence was in the offing and quickly grew bored enough to return to their cups and their conversations.
Juhg felt sorry for the serving girl. Raisho meant nothing by his outburst, but she did not know him and did not know that.
"Raisho," Juhg said. "Please be mindful of her time. The tavern is full and she is very busy." He didn't want an angry seaman ready to fight them over the attentions of the serving wench.
Juhg tried not to let the reaction bother him. Here on the mainland, away from the safety of Greydawn Moors, most humans didn't respect dwellers. Most humans thought of dwellers, if they thought of them at all, primarily as a cheap labor source or vermin. The goblins often referred to dwellers simply as eaters, and talked of them as charitably as they would of a locust invasion.
Dweller villages found outside the few cities and towns that dotted the coastlines fell hard to the goblin slavers. Once the goblins clapped every captured dweller into chains, the goblins burned the villages as though they were lice-infested nests. Even if a slave escaped, there was no home to return to.
"I'll have ale," Raisho told the serving wench. "Quickly now, an' plenty of it. I've got me a powerful thirst." He glanced at Juhg. "What will ye have?"
"Chulotzberry tea," Juhg said. "Please."
"Of course, milords." The serving wench ducked her head.
"Thank you," Juhg called after her. A human serving him still struck him as strange. At the Great Library, dwellers still handled the menial tasks. But many humans who came to the Vault of All Known Knowledge for answers to questions had treated him as an equal.
In fact, he was even on speaking terms with the Grandmagister's wizard friend Craugh. And Craugh, wizard of no little repute and an enigmatic history, claimed few as friends. His wizardly powers, town gossips said, sometimes increased the population of toads when someone irritated him past the point of tolerance.
"So what brings ye here?" Raisho asked, indicating the tavern with an expansive wave. "If ye'd wanted to be safe, ye'd have stayed aboard Wind-chaser."
"I wanted to feel firm land beneath my feet again," Juhg answered honestly.
Raisho shook his head sorrowfully. "I told ye afore ye left that the sea would be no place for ye, Juhg. 'Tis a hard life upon the salt, an' a lonely one at that, even in the best of circumstance. Ain't fittin' for a dweller because ye all are so much of family."
That was true of most dwellers, Juhg silently agreed. "I have no family." He had intended the statement only as one of fact, bereft of emotion. Instead, his words sounded bleak and harsh, even to his ears. His loss never stayed far from his heart.
Raisho stopped smiling and broke eye contact. "Ye're a good friend to me, Juhg. Don't ever feel like ye got no family, 'cause as long as I still breathe, ye'll have all the family I can give." He raised his eyes to Juhg with some embarrassment. Raisho wasn't a man who easily spoke of tender feelings.
"Thank you," Juhg said. "I wish I had something to offer in return."
"Ye do. I've sailed a lot of the Blood-Soaked Sea. Seen dozens of ports like the hog's wallow we're in now. I've seldom had the friendship the likes of the one I now have with ye." Raisho grinned and wiggled his brows. He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "An' I've never had me one what could make me a rich man with tradin'."
Juhg laughed in spite of the tension of the moment, in spite of the mistake he'd very nearly made with the journal keeping he hadn't intended to be doing. He returned his attentions to his plate. Dwellers, after all, had earned their goblin nicknames.
The serving wench returned with the young sailor's ale and Juhg's glass of chulotzberry tea. Raisho curled a silver coin, much too much for the drinks, into the young woman's hand.
"Thank ye," he stated kindly, with a smile as generous as the tip. "I meant ye no harm. Honest I didn't."
She nodded and smiled, and Juhg guessed that she knew the nature of the coin pressed into her hand. "Let me know if you need anything further, milords." She backed away, then turned and fled.
"So?" Raisho asked expectantly.
"What?" Juhg asked, acting as though he didn't know what his friend referred to.
"Yer book. What was ye a-writin' in it?"
Juhg chewed the olive flatbread carefully as he surveyed the tavern. The Broken Tiller served mostly sailors and longshoremen who ferried the goods from the ships out in the harbor. Unfortunately, pirates mixed in with that clientele on a regular basis, though they never came into the harbor flying the black flag.
The tavern looked as though the initial builders cobbled it together from shipwrecks that chanced upon the craggy shores or the reef farther out in the harbor. Probably beginning as a single structure enclosing a great room and fashioned from the stern of a large merchant ship, the tavern now stretched out with four similar rooms, all cramped and close-quartered. Narrow doorways, not quite square, joined the rooms.
Similar architecture covered the broken hills that framed the port village, all of them at one time or another pieces of sailing ships or cobbled from crate timbers or masts. If he hadn't known that humans and a few dwarves plying blacksmiths' trade lived there, Juhg would have sworn the place was home to dwellers. Dwellers held fame as a people who made lives for themselves from the remnants of worldly goods left by others, though some insisted those goods were little more than trash and unwanted debris.
"I was writing my thoughts," Juhg answered obliquely, wishing that his friend would drop the matter.
"What thoughts, then?" Raisho gestured toward the heaped plate.
"Please," Juhg said, though his first impulse was to claim the food as his own. He was back on the mainland now, not in Greydawn Moors, where no dweller went without food after a full day's work. No dweller there claimed a stone for a pillow either. When he'd sailed aboard Windchaser from the Yondering Docks where the Blood-Soaked Sea lapped upon the shores of Greydawn Moors, Juhg had prepared himself to return to that hand-to-mouth existence. He was ashamed that such selfish thoughts of gluttony came back so easily.
"Yer thoughts," Raisho reminded as he helped himself to a corn cake. He slathered the corn cake with creamed butter and golden orange fire-pear preserves.
"Mine," Juhg agreed. "How are the firepear preserves? I haven't tried them." He'd been afraid to because the strong smell had burned his nose.
"Ye won't like it. Too strong." Raisho helped himself to another corn cake, the next to last, and covered it with firepear preserves.
Unwilling to quietly watch his final corn cake be devoured in such a cavalier fashion by Raisho, who often exhibited a dwellerlike appetite by eating when there was no way he could possibly be hungry, Juhg claimed the remaining corn cake. He helped himself to preserves, scented the concoction again, and told himself that the firepears could not possibly be that hot. Biting into the cake, he found he had a mouthful of what felt like coals pumped to full heat by a blacksmith's bellows. Or maybe he had a mouthful of stinging brinebees. Hurriedly, he grabbed the glass of tea and drank deeply, seeking the soothing and healing balm of the chulotzberry.
"I warned ye," Raisho said.
Reluctantly, thinking that he might try cleaning the firepear preserves off to at least salvage the corn cake, Juhg realized the futility of the effort and shoved the morsel over to the young sailor.
Raisho smiled broadly as he accepted the surrender. "Thank ye kindly."
"Don't mention it," Juhg croaked, then drank more tea. He focused on the remnants of his meal, getting most of them slightly ahead of Raisho's questing fingers.
"The book."
Juhg regarded his friend. He had known Raisho for three years before signing ship's articles with Windchaser and Captain Attikus. Raisho usually didn't possess the tenacity of thought he now so plainly exhibited.
Keeping his voice pitched low, Juhg said, "I was making notes about this place."
"The port?"
"Yes. Kelloch's Harbor."
Raisho sorted through Juhg's plate and found a sizable chunk of pricklemelon. He popped the green and red fruit into his mouth and relished the salty sweet rush of flavor.
"I could order you a plate," Juhg said. "We could pay from our profits."
Grinning, Raisho agreed. "We could. We could indeed. But I'm not that hungry." He took a baked potato in his fingers and upended the tuber to pour the honey-glazed seaweed into his mouth. He chewed and sighed with content.
Juhg marveled at the young sailor's capacity. Even Taurak Bleiyz, fictional dweller hero-And wasn't that a redundancy?-and champion whose own appetites were legendary, would have been shamed by Raisho's ability to consume.
"All this writin' ye're doin' here an' aboard Windchaser," Raisho said, "makes me wonder if 'n ye were truly ready to leave the Vault."
Glancing around quickly, Juhg made certain that no one had overheard the conversation. "Raisho, I beg you to watch your tongue. I swear, it fairly luffs in the breeze created by your breathing. No one here knows of that place, and it would be better to keep it that way."
Greydawn Moors existed on no known map. Old magic, ancient and powerful magic, had created the island where the Vault of All Known Knowledge had been hidden away since Lord Kharrion had begun gathering his goblin armies. Those magicks wielded by the human wizards had torn the island from the sea bottom. Dwarves, according to the histories, had shorn up the thick stone columns that held the island in place at the ocean's bottom. Elven warders had made the risen island fertile and loosed the great aquatic monsters that roamed freely in the Blood-Soaked Sea beneath the pall of continual gray fog kept in place by an ancient enchantment.
A sober expression fitted itself to Raisho's face. "I know. I know." He waved Juhg's warning away. "All this secrecy, it's just easy to ferget, ye know."
"No," Juhg said distinctly, "it's not."
"Aye. Perhaps it's not. Perhaps it's just me."
"And perhaps it's the ale," Juhg suggested.
"I was just of a mind to celebrate, is all." Raisho pushed his ale mug away, then folded his arms across his chest petulantly. "Wasn't exactly me fault ye weren't in the first tavern I went a-lookin' fer ye in."
"No," Juhg said agreeably. "I suppose it wasn't. And I suppose there were a half-dozen such establishments between that one and this one."
"I don't know," Raisho agreed guiltily. "I didn't count."
Juhg didn't want his friend to feel too badly. Raisho's mistake was less than if he'd drawn attention by writing in the journal. Juhg used his knife to nudge a flutterfish fillet toward the young sailor.
Raisho took the fillet in his fingers, tilted his head back, and dropped the food into his mouth. He chewed contentedly. "I thought ye knew all about Kelloch's Harbor from them-" He stopped himself before he said books.
Before leaving Greydawn Moors, Juhg had prepared for his journey by choosing the ship he would secure passage on. From there, based on his knowledge of Captain Attikus' normal trade routes, Juhg had assembled a book regarding conversations he'd had with sailors who had frequented the taverns along the Yondering Docks.
"The knowledge that I had," Juhg said, "was good enough to prepare a modest trade venture, but there is so much that was left out of my.sources.
"So ye're figurin' on remedyin' that? With yer own efforts?"
Juhg pondered that. He didn't have an actual reason for all of his writing. He just couldn't seem to help himself. Still, Raisho's supposition gave him at least an excuse for his efforts. "It seemed the thing to do. I can always send the.my work.back with another ship. Or with Windchaser."
Shaking his head, Raisho asked, "Have ye given any thought to the possibility that ye weren't through with yer work there? That maybe Grand-magister Lamplighter was right about yer callin' an' what ye was truly meant to be?"
Quietly contemplating another bite of pricklemelon, Juhg said nothing.
"I can see that ye have thought about all of that," Raisho said a moment later. "Ye miss all them.Well, ye know what I'm talking about."
Juhg did indeed. Raisho's deliberate nonuse of the word books resonated within him. The Vault of All Known Knowledge was the world's repository of literature, of nonfiction and fiction. When Lord Kharrion had led the goblins across the world to pillage and loot, they had deliberately destroyed books. Vast libraries, some that had existed in fact and some that existed only in legend, were lost.
Thousands of books remained within the Vault, though, and cataloguing them all had taken generations of dwellers in an attempt to put the collections to rights. Juhg missed the Great Library. All those years ago, the Builders had raised the structure so hurriedly that blueprints of the vast buildings and caverns did not exist. The wings and hallways and stairways meandered all across the mountaintop. The lower sections of the Library stood honeycombed from the Knucklebones Mountains up above the Ogre's Fingers. Some dweller historians continued to maintain that the Builders had constructed part of the island from the body of a giant ogre Lord Kharrion had ensorcelled into his service.
Those events had taken place during the dark times known as the Cataclysm. Even now, after all those centuries had passed, the books gathered in the Vault of All Known Knowledge remained zealously guarded by the dweller Librarians, as well as the elves and the dwarves who lived there.
"I couldn't stay there," Juhg said.
"Grandmagister Lamplighter made a home fer ye," Raisho said. "As he made homes fer others over the years who he brought home from his travels. Ye could still be there. An' if 'n ye so chose, why, I'm sure the Grandmagister would welcome ye back with open arms."
Juhg knew that.
"Way I heard it," Raisho said in a softer voice, "ye were like to a son to him, ye were."
"I know," Juhg said. "But my family may still be out there." Then he corrected himself. "Here. They may still be here. I've got a mother and a father, two brothers and a sister that I know of."
"If 'n the goblin slavers the Grandmagister freed ye from didn't do fer 'em."
Juhg glanced at the young sailor.
Raisho's blue eyes held a stricken look. "Didn't mean no harm nor foul, Juhg. Just tryin' to put everythin' in perspective fer ye because I care about ye. Which is why I put in a good word with Cap'n Attikus fer ye."
"What do you mean?"
Embarrassment colored Raisho's face. "Nothin'. I meant nothin'. Just me mouth betrayin' me mind again."
"You meant something," Juhg said with a little force. During their three-year friendship, he'd never put too much pressure on the ties that bound them. "What did you mean?"
Raisho scowled. "Don't ye be botherin' the cap'n with it. Like as not, he won't be overly fond of either of us if ye go off askin' him about this. Better we should just keep it betwixt us."
"What word did you put in?"
Shrugging, Raisho answered, "Weren't much. Cap'n Attikus, he just wasn't too happy about takin' on a scribbler, is all."
A scribbler! Juhg couldn't believe it. Captain Attikus was one of the few ship's captains in all the world who knew Greydawn Moors laid across the forbidden expanse of the Blood-Soaked Sea. The captain knew why the island had to remain hidden. If the goblin ships discovered the existence of the Vault of All Known Knowledge, they would sail on Greydawn Moors and burn the island down to the waterline, showing no mercy to man or beast.
Librarians at the Vault held great respect from those who knew of them. Unfortunately, not many knew of them.
"A scribbler!" Juhg gasped in disbelief. Anger stirred within him. "The term is grossly offensive." Accepting it meant accepting an insult to the time and effort his teachers had put into him as well. He couldn't do that.
Raising his hands meekly, Raisho said, "Now, now. Don't go off an' get yer dander all riled up."
But Juhg couldn't stop himself. He had lived as a slave for fourteen years before Grandmagister Lamplighter had freed him and brought him back to Greydawn Moors. "Librarians offer so much more than merely readers and writers. They hold storehouses of knowledge, hold keys to information that many would consider to be magic, and ways of understanding that can give people access to worlds. Real worlds as well as made-up ones. Where would civilization be without biographies, volumes on agriculture, sailing, and construction? Where would the imagination be without the heroes in stories? Where would the heart be without passionate tales of love and loneliness and sacrifice?"
"Avast there, matey," Raisho said. "It's not me ye're in need of convincin'."
Juhg slumped back in the rickety wooden chair. He nearly tumbled off the worn cushion his height had forced him to use in order to reach his meal. "I thought the captain was an ally."
"The cap'n is an ally." Raisho scowled. "Ye'll find none truer than Cap'n Attikus an' the crew of Windchaser." He paused. "He just weren't very happy about takin' on someone so.so."
"Short?" Juhg supplied with just a hint of sarcasm to point out his friend's poor attempt to excuse the sea captain.
"New to the sea," Raisho said.
"I am a skilled sailor," Juhg protested. "I learned my skills aboard One-Eyed Peggie when the Grandmagister returned from the mainland all those years ago."
"The cap'n didn't know that."
Juhg stopped for a moment. His advent to Greydawn Moors had been almost thirty years before. As a dweller, he was still young, not even of middle age before he hit his fiftieth birthday. But thirty years was most of a lifetime to a human. Few humans probably still lived who remembered the story, and humans rarely lived on Greydawn Moors.
"You're right," Juhg said.
"Cap'n Attikus," Raisho pointed out, "likes to run a tight ship."
Juhg knew that as well. During the past few weeks, Captain Attikus had impressed the dweller.
"Even with what I said," Raisho went on, "I doubt the cap'n would have taken ye on if'n it hadn't been fer the Grandmagister talkin' to him."
"Wick." Juhg caught himself using the Grandmagister's name with such familiar abandon and stopped at once. "The Grandmagister put in a good word for me?"
"Aye." Raisho nodded. "Several, in fact."
"I didn't know that."
"I don't think either the Grandmagister or the cap'n wanted much known about it. If'n I hadn't been aboardship finishin' up some sail an' riggin' repairs, why, I wouldn'ta known it either."
Juhg pondered that. Grandmagister Lamplighter had acted loath to lose him from the Vault. Was that an act? Was I really a mistake that he had made but couldn't admit to? The questions pounded at Juhg's mind. During the nearly thirty years he had been at the Great Library and studied under the Grandmagister and the other First Level Librarians, he had never felt as if he belonged.
"Don't get all caught up in them names an' the circumstances of how ye came to be aboard Windchaser," Raisho said. "Ye're aboard her, an' ye're doin' a powerful good job of mendin' sail an' keepin' the ship tidy. An' Cook? Why, Cook says he's never in all his days had a finer helper. Nor one who knew more recipes than him."
"That was a gracious compliment," Juhg acknowledged. Not that Cook would ever bestow it upon me.
"It were." Raisho nodded, obviously feeling the conversation was once more safely out of treacherous waters. But being Raisho, he couldn't leave it there. "What I was a-gettin' at was that maybe ye ain't as done with that part of yer life as ye thought ye was."
"I'm done," Juhg said decisively, but he felt the declaration was more for himself than Raisho. Still, his inner turmoil would subside somewhat if his friend made no further mention of the Library.
"The Grandmagister, why, he told Cap'n Attikus that ye was a natural to.to that trade. He seemed right sad to lose ye."
"And I was sad to lose him," Juhg admitted. "But my life is not there on that island. After everything I've been through, Raisho, after everything I've seen and everything I've read, I want a bigger world." He shook his head and lowered his voice in shame. "Librarians aren't supposed to want that. They're supposed to want books and tea and the occasional bowl of pipeweed."
"Mayhap," Raisho said, nodding.
"I can't do that." But he had wished that he could, pleaded with himself to be happy with a small life. He used the search for his missing family only as an excuse to leave, and guilt stung him over that. "Greydawn Moors is just too.too.small."
Raisho nodded for a moment and took up a chunk of pricklemelon. "Seems to me that the Grandmagister gets around a lot fer a dweller. Never heard of a Grandmagister afore him that left the island."
"Never," Juhg agreed. Grandmagister Edgewick Lamplighter had been like no other head of the Vault of All Known Knowledge who had ever gone before. Juhg didn't know the reason for all of Wick's adventures to the mainland, but he knew the reason for so