Mel Odom - Wrath of the Blue Lady

A sweeping glance of the round room revealed the bookcases that reached at least fifteen feet from floor to ceiling. Books, all manner of books in many kinds of bindings, filled the shelves.

“Forest Mother,” Shang-Li whispered before he could stop himself as he surveyed the books. Then he waited to see if his inadvertent expression of surprise would set off a spell triggered by voice.

When nothing happened, he let out a pent-up breath and gave silent thanks to Mielikki. Once again, the Forest Mother was looking out for him.

Memory of his father’s voice jangled Shang-Li’s thoughts. She only looks out for those that look out for themselves. Have a care here, you great-footed oaf. Don’t get foolish .

Despite the fear that had tightened his belly, Shang-Li gave into the awe and curiosity that filled him. Outside of Candlekeep and the Standing Tree Monastery, the wizard’s collection of books was the largest he’d ever seen.

He took a deep breath and broke the fascination that had fallen over him. For a moment he worried that the effect was part of an enchantment that had been laid upon the books.

However, he quickly dismissed that idea. As his father had told him, Ravel Kouldar wouldn’t trifle with any magical spell that wouldn’t kill someone outright. The knowledge hadn’t been reassuring, but it hadn’t been meant that way either.

Across the room, a large mahogany desk gleamed from the outside incandescence. The top had been cut from a single piece of wood that showed the rings under a heavy varnish. An inkwell, a clutch of quills, and candelabra sat on the desk. An array of globes sat in front of the desk. Besides the doors to the balcony, another set of doors lay to his right. Those led to the stairwell and the lower floor.

Shang-Li knew better than to try the doors. Those would definitely be protected. Every door in the tower would be sealed. He’d been surprised the windows hadn’t been. His attention shifted to the three globes in front of the desk. Shang-Li focused. Don’t get distracted, he told himself. Your father is out there now counting down the time you’re inside.

But Shang-Li couldn’t forego his curiosity. It wasn’t every day that he invaded a wizard’s sanctum.

Carefully, Shang-Li stepped forward and examined the globes. He recognized the first one as the world of Toril as it had been before the Spellplague brought lost Abeir back from where the twin world had been hidden.

While growing up, Shang-Li had read many books concerning the twin worlds and the wars the gods had fought to control them. Mystra’s death a hundred years ago had broken the barrier between the worlds. A new continent had appeared in the Trackless Sea, and disasters had swept across Toril as the planet had become whole and less at the same time.

The second globe was of Toril as it was now. There were several unfinished areas he could have helped Ravel Kouldar fill in, but he doubted the wizard would be interested in his assistance.

Shang-Li longed to be out there exploring the newly arrived lands. As a historian for the monastery, he lived for the stories he found. And these days the stories were more like riddles, waiting to be solved.

The uncovered tales, pottery, weapons, and artifacts that belonged to cultures that hadn’t been part of Toril for thousands of years made writing history even more difficult. Historians, those like his father that served as librarians and keepers of knowledge, fought over how things were to be labeled. Explorers, like Shang-Li, reveled in a world that still held secrets.

The third globe was even less defined. It held only patches of lands that had once been part of Toril and were no longer on that plane. Ravel Kouldar was evidently attempting to fill in some of the spaces with educated guesses based on what parts of Toril had slipped back across the barrier weakened by the Spellplague.

Shang-Li thought seriously of shoving all three globes into the magical bag he’d brought with him. The bag was nearly bottomless, capable of holding a great many things without increasing in size or weight. His father had given it to him the first time he’d left the Standing Tree Monastery. He’d also told him to fill it with worthwhile things.

Things go wrong when you try to do too much . His father’s cautionary words curbed Shang-Li’s zeal. Stay with the plan .

Reluctantly, Shang-Li turned from the globes.

With the magical crystal still held before him, Shang-Li walked to the wall on his left. He sidestepped a hanging skeleton, making sure to stay out of reach just in case, and stopped in front of the bookshelves. A ladder built into the shelving was attached from the floor to the topmost shelf to his right.

The time had come to find out how good the information his father and the monastery had gotten was. He knelt and gazed at the shelves.

In the time of Shang-Li’s grandfather, a historian had happened on information that the Standing Tree Monastery had lost in a battle nearly three hundred years ago. An invading army under General Kirat Han had laid siege to the monastery and sought the riches they knew the monks had hidden within.

But he’d taken more than mere treasure.

The Shou kept journals written by monks that had served the monasteries. Wisdom and history resided in those pages, and all of it was irreplaceable. General Han had taken six of the books of Liou Chang, also known as Liou the Perceptive. The books had contained all of the monk’s family history of the five other monks that had preceded him.

Most important of all, though, Liou had written about spells, which General Han had used to open gates around the Inner Sea. With that power at his command, the warlord had been almost unstoppable. The knowledge of those spells remained a threat as long as the book containing the information was at large.

General Han had executed Liou the Perceptive, then ordered the monastery burned to the ground and salt poured into the gardens. Ultimately, the survivors had rebuilt the monastery and exacted vengeance on General Han. The warlord soon fathered a traitorous son that gave information to the Standing Tree monks that allowed them to kill him.

Unfortunately, Liou’s books had been hidden, scattered throughout General Han’s doomed empire. The search for Liou’s books had become legendary. Shang-Li had remained on the lookout for them for all his life. But he had never seen even one of those the monastery had recovered.

Four of Liou the Perceptive’s books had been found and returned over the years. General Han had traded them to sages and clerics that desired the herbal magics contained in the pages. Those had been relatively harmless, but the monks hadn’t known that until they’d gotten possession of them and deciphered them. Liou had always written his original manuscripts in code, and he’d created a new code for each manuscript. Liou had been laborious in his efforts, and each code had taken years to decipher.

Two of the books had at last been traced to an ill-fated historian, a man called Bayel Droust. Ravel Kouldar didn’t have either of the two missing books, but he did have a journal of a ship’s officer that had gone down on the Grayling . After hundreds of years of searching, the monks of Standing Tree Monastery finally had a clue as to where the ship had gone down, and what had happened to it.

Ravel Kouldar had recently hired a scribe to help him organize some of his books. Once the job was finished, Kouldar had planned to kill the scribe. The young man had kept his wits about him and barely made away with his life a step ahead of an assassin. In time, because he was one of those the Standing Tree Monastery had taught and who had learned of Liou’s missing books, he’d reported his experience and the existence of the book mentioning Grayling to the monks only a short time ago. The monastery had worked quickly to take advantage of this bit of good fortune. Kwan Yung was given a ship and told to find Shang-Li, then travel to the Pirate Isles to verify the scribe’s report of the sailor’s journal.