Anthology - The Search For Magic

“Please, let me go. What’s it to you, Stanach? Nothing, so just… let me go.”

As swiftly as he’d turned before, that swiftly did Stanach turn again. His eyes took Jai’s and held them. “I feflte being here. I hate being out of Thorbardin. I was too long away in older days.” He glanced at his ruined right hand, then away. “I came home broken and saw the city and the kinship broken after that. I hate being out of Thorbardin.”

“Why? If you leave the city, will it fall apart without you?”

“No. No, if I leave the city, I fall apart without it.”

He looked away. Jai saw nothing of his face, his blue-flecked dark eyes. He saw no sign of what the dwarf was thinking or feeling, only one small twitch of his thick shoulders.

“All right,” Stanach said, his eyes still on some point south, some point in the direction of Thorbardin. “All right. It’s all falling apart, elf, but if you want to stand in the ruin, off you go.”

You, he said. He bent and picked up something from the shadows: a broken stick one of the worm-handlers had discarded. With one swift stomp of his booted foot, he sheared off the splintered end. The stick he handed to Jai, with two words of advice. “Use it.”

Then he walked away, back south toward Thorbardin. Jai smiled, following. Before Thorbardin, or even the crossway, they would come to the way out of the tunnel, the way through and up to Mianost. It was all right. He could manage the walk. He’d come this far.

He was bleeding by the time he got there-cuts from falls, scraped hands, torn knees, his cheek ripped raw by a rock. He was bruised, and the muscles and bones of his knee screamed. He fell again, he didn’t think he could get up again, but Stanach said, not gently, “Come on, elf. You said you could do it. So do it.”

“Shut up,” Jai snarled, and he wasn’t sure it was only sweat running down his cheeks. “Shut up and give me your hand.”

Stanach did, gripping hard, laying bruises on top of bruises as he hauled Jai to his feet. Wordless, he put the stick back into Jai’s hand, and he pointed to the stone wall, the rocky ribcage of the tunnel. “There,” he said, but Jai saw nothing other than worm-chewed stone and moisture running down in rivulets made golden by the lantern light.

Stanach touched the wall, just a gentle nudge, and the stone swung inward-a slab as long as an elf is tall, and as wide. It moved silently, smoothly, and there was no magic attached to it, just good dwarven engineering. When Stanach held the lantern close to the entrance, he illuminated rough stone stairs winding upward. He did not, however, illuminate anything that might remotely resemble guards or any kind of watch. “Not at this end,” Stanach said. “The guards are above, and they’re your folk. We delve; they ward.”

They stood quiet a moment and then Stanach said, “That’s your last climb up. Just hang around looking suspicious and some elf or another will find you and fetch you home.”

Jai drew breath to speak, then held it. Thin light slipped suddenly down the stairs, pale and silvery. A whiff of rain drifted in on a vagrant breeze. A woman’s voice wafted softly down from above, speaking in Elvish. The voice sounded familiar, distant whisper though it was. When it came closer, Jai knew it. Annalisse!

Another party of refugees was coming through, but why was Annalisse with them? His heart sank. Had she fallen foul of the Dark Knights? Had the Marshal learned of her connection to the resistance?

Annalisse’s footfalls came closer. Another followed her, this one’s tread heavier. A dwarf, Jai thought, and then he heard the chime of ring mail, the clank of armor.

“I told you the Marshal would want to know about this,” Annalisse said coolly. “This is no cave. This is a way down into the earth.”

The next voice Jai heard was human, and he knew the clanking armor was black, the wearer a man whose soul was owned by the green dragon. “Damn. That’s dwarf craft.”

Whistling, something dark and swift flew past Jai’s face. Stanach’s throwing axe made a terrible sound as it bit deeply into the throat of the Knight. The man made no sound at all but for that of his body clanking down the stairs. Shoving Jai back, tumbling him to the stony floor, Stanach leaped for the corpse and kicked his axe free of the Knight’s neck.

Shouts and cursing erupted in the stairwell as three more Knights ran down the steps.

Jai got the stone wall behind his back, the cold damp rock biting into his flesh as he pressed close, levering himself to his feet. Stanach’s voice swore in the name of a god years gone away.

“By Reorx! Close the door, elf!”

Close it? Close him in with the Knights and the traitor? And what? Howl for help? Beneath him, the earth vibrated. No matter how loudly he shouted, no one would hear him above the thunder of worms eating through stone. Jai kicked the door open wider and got a good grip on his stick. The first Knight to come through got his feet tangled in the stick and, while he was struggling to rise, his skull shattered by a two-handed blow with a rock. Bone shards flew up from the broken skull, brains and blood seeped through. Jai’s stomach turned, his gorge rose.

“Close the damned door!”

A second Knight came through, staggering. Blood poured from his mouth and nose. He tripped over his fellow and Stanach’s axe stuck quivering in his neck above his mail shirt.

Jai dropped his stick and planted his hands on the pile of corpses, ignoring the stench of blood and death. Balanced on one leg, he yanked the axe put of the Knight’s neck and hobbled for the doorway. From the shadow within the doorway, he trembled to see Stanach standing on lower ground, three steps below a burly Knight-undefendable ground-and the glinting tip of a keen edged sword was dipped to touch his neck. Above the Knight, Annalisse stood. Her face was cold as the white moon on an icy night.

“Kill him,” she said.

Icy fear washed through Jai. In his scribe’s hand was a weapon that would do Stanach no good. Neither could he charge up the stairs to the dwarfs rescue. He grinned suddenly, and he moved, flinging himself into three lurching steps, the stick in his hand. With a cry to distract the Knight, Jai hit Stanach hard behind the knees.

Roaring curses, Stanach fell backwards. The Knight, just thrusting his sword, lost his balance and pitched headlong down the stairs. Annalisse cried out as Stanach staggered to his feet and took the axe Jai thrust into his hand. He finished the Knight in the space of a breath and turned toward Annalisse, arm cocked to throw the axe.

“No!”Jai cried.

For one furious instant, Stanach didn’t understand.

Jai put a hand on his arm, holding his throw. “She’s betrayed the resistance, Stanach. We have to know if there are others.”

His words hung between the dwarf and the Lady Librarian, the question unanswered.

“Lady,” he said, and he hadn’t meant to speak gently, yet he did. “Why?”

She closed her eyes, as one in pain. “I did it for the library.”

“The library? I don’t understand.”

Eyes shut, she drew a tight, pained breath. “I went to Medan and made a bargain. I told him I had something he wanted, if only he would promise to preserve the library. Through all that’s to come, he must keep it safe.”

On the evening of his last night in Qualinost, she’d done that. For a fleeting moment, Jai saw in her icy expression what he’d seen then-that longing look, that sense of loss’s shadow as she looked around at her precious hoard of manuscripts and books, songs and fables and legends, all the golden history of the Qualinesti. She’d bargained her soul for the Library of Qualinost, and into the bargain thrown elven and dwarven lives.