Mel Odom - The Lost Library of Cormanthyr

"There were some problems," Baylee admitted. "I think we were on the verge of working them out."

"What problems?"

Baylee gazed down at her. "And if I choose not to answer?"

She shrugged. "Then I have more to wonder about when we resume our travels."

"You had parents, I assume," Baylee said.

"Of course."

See? Xuxa put in. Already you're finding common ground.

Baylee ignored her. "Did you ever rebel against your parents?"

"Perhaps, at times."

"And how do you get along with them now?"

"They're dead," Cordyan replied.

The answer caught Baylee off guard. He hesitated, forgetting about the argument he'd been building toward. "I'm sorry."

"It happened some time ago," Cordyan said. "An accident"

Baylee searched her face for any signs of lingering pain, but read nothing. Over the last three days he'd noted that the watch lieutenant could keep her own counsel. "My disagreement with Golsway was much simpler than either one of us would allow it to be. I thought I was grown, and he didn't agree."

"So you left?"

"According to the Lady's teachings, each of us must find our own path. The reward of that path of independence is in how much closer you can be to those whose lives have touched yours."

"Where need and want are one."

Baylee nodded. "You follow the teachings of Mystra?"

"I am an interested observer, but not a passionate worshiper. Not yet. I take it you are."

'To be a worshiper is so simple," he said. "All you have to do is look around you. When you are taught where to look, you will see the Lady's work everywhere. Just as I see Mielikki's." Despite his first allegiance to the Lady of the Forests, he also owed a great deal to the teachings of Mystra.

"As yet, I do not share your confidence." She looked back at the group. "I'll leave you to your book." She turned to go.

Baylee watched her. Over the last three days, he'd maintained his own company. Xuxa kept him in conversation all during the day, and watched over him at night when his thoughts busied themselves while he stared up at the stars. But it wasn't the same as talking to someone who didn't know him, someone who didn't try to guess his every thought.

'Wait," he called. He capped the inkwell and replaced it in his pack.

She turned, looking up at him.

Baylee dropped easily out of the tree, brushing journeycake crumbs off his breeches. "This is a journal. I was just making notes."

"About what?"

'The things I can remember from the last few days," Baylee explained. "Conversations I can remember having with Golsway in the days before I left his house."

"May I see it?"

Baylee gave it willingly. The journal was thick with parchment, most of the pages filled with his writing. Each entry was dated.

Cordyan looked at the last page in the book that he'd been working on. Drawings covered the page on the right, while script covered the facing page. "This is the woman you saw that night?" she asked.

"As well as I can remember," Baylee agreed. He studied the drawings. He'd kept most of them simple, drawing the drow female's face from a number of angles, front, and profile.

"These are very good."

"I'm a poor artist," Baylee said, feeling uncomfortable. It was one thing for someone to compliment him on his researching skills or on his ability to recover a particularly fragmented vase even though he'd never seen it whole before.

"How can you say that?" Cordyan flipped back through the pages, finding the renderings he'd done of the circlets that had imprisoned the skeleton warriors. There were even renderings of the skeleton warrior kneeling as it had with its face turned toward the sky. The tattoo had been exploded in another view, and the whole of it drawn in as best as Baylee could imagine.

"Golsway taught me," Baylee said. "It is not so incredible. But when you've uncovered some of the masterpieces we discovered during our journeys, the way some of those artists were able to work in the mediums, whatever modest talent I may have pales by comparison."

Cordyan ran a finger along his pages of script. "Your handwriting is beautiful as well."

"Golsway never accepted anything less than my best," Baylee said. "He always told me that an explorer wasn't worth his salt if he made records no one could read."

"So what do you write in here?"

"Anything," Baylee replied. "What I think, what I hear, what I see. Any conjectures on my part. Sometimes information I can copy down from reference books."

Cordyan flipped the journal open to the first page. "You write a lot." She flipped through the pages, opening to maps of areas Baylee had walked through, seeing faces of people Baylee had seen, seeing a handful of pictures here and there rendered in ink and sometimes chalks of picturesque areas where the ranger had camped.

"It's a big world."

The watch lieutenant stopped at a page that had a drawing of the pirate ship that had attacked a merchanter Baylee had traveled aboard. "You've only been working in this journal for the last three months."

Baylee glanced at the notation on the front of the journal and saw that she was right. "Yes."

"You travel a lot," Cordyan said.

Watching the woman, Baylee tried to figure out what she was after. He'd questioned people himself in his own line of work, and he could tell she was closing in on a thread she pursued. "Yes."

She glanced at him, handing the book back. She appeared threatening in no way, merely interested in his journalizing. "You must fill up a lot of books like these."

"Three or four a year," Baylee admitted. "Sometimes more. It depends. When I worked some of the sites Golsway and I discovered, we sometimes filled up a half-dozen such journals each."

"What do you do with them when you fill one?" she asked. "I notice you keep a light pack."

Then Baylee realized what she was after. Evidently no one had found journals like his in Golsway's house. "I have a place that keeps them for me."

"What place?"

"Candlekeep. Perhaps you've heard of it."

"I've heard of it," Cordyan said. "You've been there?"

"Yes."

"I'm told the price of admission is quite high," the watch lieutenant said. "Usually a book of some sort, and worth no less than ten thousand gold pieces. К your journals are kept there, they must be highly regarded."

"I have a friend there," Baylee said. "Brother Qinzl, who claims to entertain a certain vicarious thrill of exploration when he reads one of my journals."

"I thought you would have kept your journals with Golsway's."

"No," Baylee said. "Not since Golsway deemed that my writing was strong enough to stand on its own."

"When was that?"

"When I was fourteen," Baylee answered.

"You've written journals at fourteen that are in Candlekeep?" She seemed amazed.

Baylee shook his head. "You have to think about the time period. During those years, Golsway was much more active than he has been of late. That was one of the things we argued over. I was still willing to go rushing after the vaguest whisper, while he was more content these days to look for a big strike. When he was younger, they were all big strikes, some just bigger than others. Those early journals detailed what members of the Explorer's Society deemed important finds."

"But they were still good enough to stand on their own?"

Baylee looked into the woman's copper eyes. "If you're asking if Golsway's journals are there, the answer is no."

"Why?"

"Because Golsway didn't want to chance a loss of the information we've discovered. If Candlekeep burned down, which won't happen because the magic wards within it prevent paper catching fire within their walls, then both sets of our works wouldn't be lost."

"Where did Golsway keep his journals?"

Baylee shook his head. "I don't know."