Jeff Grubb: The Last Guardian

Then he started looking, first among the trapped volumes, then among the untrapped ones, until he found what he was looking for. A book marked with the symbol of the key.

It was locked, a thick metal band holding it closed, secured by a lock. Nowhere in his searches had Khadgar come across a real key, though that did not surprise him, given the organization of the room. The binding was strong, and the cover itself was a metal plate bound in red leather.

Khadgar pulled the flat pieces of keys from his pouch, but they were all insufficient for the large lock. Finally, using the tip of his scraping knife, Khadgar managed to thread the sliver of metal through the lock, and it gave a satisfying “click” as he drove it home.

Khadgar looked at the cricket he kept on the table, and it was still silent.

Holding his breath, the young mage opened the heavy volume. The sour smell of decayed paper rose to his nostrils.

“Of Trapes and Lockes,” he said aloud, wrapping his mouth around the archaic script and over-vowelled words. “Beeing a Treateese on the Nature of Securing Devicees.”

Khadgar pulled up a chair (slightly lower as he had sawed off the three long legs to balance it) and began to read.

Medivh was gone a full two weeks, and by that time, Khadgar had claimed the library as his own. Each morning he rose for breakfast, gave Moroes a perfunctory update as to his progress (which the castellan, as well as Cook never gave any indication of curiosity about), then buried himself away within the vault. Lunch and supper were brought to him, and he often worked into the night by the soft bluish light from the glowing balls.

He adjusted to the nature of the tower as well. There were often images that hung at the corner of his eye, just a twinkling of a figure in a tattered cloak that would evaporate when he turned to look at it. A half-finished word that drifted on the air. A sudden coldness as if a door or window had been left open, or a sudden change of pressure, as if a hidden entrance had suddenly appeared. Sometimes the tower groaned in the wind, the ancient stones shifting on each other after centuries of construction.

Slowly, he learned the nature, if not the exact contents, of the books that were within the library, foiling the traps that were placed around the most valuable tomes. His research served him well in the last case. He soon became as expert at foiling spell mechanisms and weighted traps as he had been with locked doors and hidden secrets in Dalaran. The trick for most of them was to convince the locking mechanism (whether magical or mechanical in nature) that the lock had not been foiled when in reality it had been. Determining what set the particular trap off, whether it was weight, or a shifting bit of metal or even exposure to the sun or fresh air, was half the battle to defeating it.

There were books that were beyond him, whose locks foiled even his modified picks and dexterous knife. Those went to the highest level, toward the back, and Khadgar resolved to find out what was within them, either on his own or by threading the knowledge out of Medivh.

He doubted the latter, and wondered if the master mage had used the library as anything else than a dumping ground for inherited texts and old letters. Most mages of the Kirin Tor had at least some semblance of order to their archives, with their most valuable tomes hidden away. But Medivh had everything in a hodgepodge, as if he didn’t really need it.

Except as a test,thought Khadgar. A test to keep would-be apprentices at bay.

Now the books were on the shelves, the most valuable (and unreadable) ones secured with chains on the upper level, while the more common military histories, almanacs, and diaries were on the lower floor. Here were the scrolls as well, ranging from mundane listing of items bought and sold in Stormwind to recordings of epic poems. The last were particularly interesting since a few of them were about Aegwynn, Medivh’s claimed mother.

If she lived over eight hundred years, she must have been a powerful mage indeed, thought Khadgar. More information about her would likely be in the protected books in the back. So far these tomes had resisted every common entreaty and physical attempt to sidestep their locks and traps, and the detecting cricket practically mewled in horror whenever he attempted to unlock them.

Still, there was more than enough to do, with categorizing the loose pieces, reassembling those volumes which age had almost destroyed, and sorting (or at least reading) most of the correspondence. Some of the later was in elven script, and even more of it, from a variety of sources, was in some sort of cipher. The latter type came with a variety of seals upon it, from both Azeroth, Khaz Modan, and Lordaeron, as well as places that Khadgar could not locate in the atlas. A large group communicated in cipher with each other, and with Medivh himself.

There were several ancient grimoires on codes, most of them dealing with letter replacement and cant. Nothing compared to the code used in these ciphers. Perhaps they used a combination of methods to create their own.

As a result, Khadgar had the grimoires on codes, along with primers in elven and dwarven languages, open on the table the evening that Medivh suddenly returned to the tower.

Khadgar didn’t hear him as much as felt his sudden presence, the way the air changes as a storm front bears across the farmland. The young mage turned in his chair and there was Medivh, his broad shoulders filling the doorway, his robes billowing behind him of their own volition.

“Sir, I…” started Khadgar, smiling and half-rising from his chair. Then he saw that the master mage’s hair was in disarray, and his lambent green eyes were wide and angry.

“Thief!” shouted Medivh, pointing at Khadgar. “Interloper!” The elder mage pointed at the younger and began to intone a string of alien syllables, words not crafted for the human throat.

Despite himself, Khadgar raised a hand and wove a symbol of protection in the air in front of him, but he might as well have been making a rude hand gesture for all the effect it had on Medivh’s spell. A wall of solidified air slammed into the younger man, bowling over both him and the chair he sat in. The grimoires and primers went skating along the surface of the table like boats caught in a sudden squall, and the notes danced away, spinning.

Surprised, Khadgar was driven back, slammed into one of the bookshelves behind him. The shelf itself rocked from the force of the blow, and the youth was afraid it would topple, spoiling his hard work. The bookcase held its position, though the pressure on Khadgar’s chest from the force of the attack intensified.

“Who are you?” thundered Medivh. “What are you doing here?”

The young mage struggled against the weight on his chest and managed to speak, “Khadgar,” he gasped. “Assistant. Cleaning library. Your orders.” Part of his mind wondered if this was why Moroes spoke in such a shorthand fashion.

Medivh blinked at Khadgar’s words, and straightened like a man who had just been woken from a deep sleep. He twisted his hand slightly, and at once the wave of solidified air evaporated. Khadgar dropped to his knees, gasping for air.

Medivh crossed to him and helped him to his feet. “I am sorry, lad,” he began. “I had forgotten you were still here. I assumed you were a thief.”

“A thief that insisted on leaving a room neater than he found it,” said Khadgar. It hurt a little when he breathed.

“Yes,” said Medivh, looking around the room, and nodding, despite the disruption his own attack had caused. “Yes. I don’t believe anyone else had ever gotten this far before.”

“I’ve sorted by type,” said Khadgar, still bent over and grasping his knees. “Histories, including epic poems, to your right. Natural sciences on your left. Legendary material in the center, with languages and reference books. The more powerful material—alchemic notes, spell descriptions, and theory go on the balcony, along with some books I could not identify that seem fairly powerful. You’re going to have to look at those yourself.”