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CHAPTER EIGHT

Grunwold, eager now that success seemed near, wasn’t to be so easily balked, even by his crush. “C’mon, Vereez. I know you feel your parents have seriously held out on you, but they might know where the other pieces are—heck, they probably have them in one of their vaults. We could get the pieces, then we could come back here, retrieve the final piece, and get Sapphire Wind to wake up whoever can help us with our inquiries.”

Xerak raised a hand. “Wait, Grunwold. I have a question for Sapphire Wind. You said you would explain how you can help us after we’d learned about the Library’s destruction. We’ve learned, now, how about some information?”

Again, Sapphire Wind spoke through Meg. “Forgive me for being tightly focused on my own concerns. I have waited a long time for someone who could help me.” Meg sighed in a manner very unlike her usually controlled self. “If you had come in the days when the Library was functioning, you would have been sent to an appropriate specialist. However, today all the specialists are archived. I had only enough power to save them. I lack the power to free them—or rather, to free all of them. If you retrieve one piece—whichever piece—of the artifact, I will seek out and retrieve the most appropriate specialist, then convince that one to aid you.”

Meg’s right index finger rose in her familiar “one moment, please” gesture. After a brief pause, Sapphire Wind said, “Meg has asked, and I will answer. I could retrieve someone now, but I have no incentive to spend my limited resources for no gain to myself.”

Vereez, daughter of bankers, nodded crisply, “That seems fair. So we’ll look for the piece that you think is still here. Can you give Teg some light, at least?”

“I can provide illumination,” Sapphire Wind replied, “for a limited amount of time.”

“If Meg doesn’t mind continuing to act as mouthpiece,” Xerak said, “then while Teg does her checking, maybe you can tell us more about what we need to do to get you to help us.”

Grunwold, his voice gruff, added, “Sapphire Wind, you do realize that the three of us are very little like our parents? You may be deceived by appearances, but none of us are skilled—uh—extraction agents. The school I attend is great at teaching a variety of good basic curriculum, as well as various specialties useful in both agriculture and art. However, theft isn’t among the courses on offer.”

Sapphire Wind paused. “Yes. I knew this about you. I have been”—another pause, as if it searched for a word—“researching your families since I began to regain some power in the years following the destruction. I hoped that one or more of the extraction agents would repent and return. This did not happen. I hoped to gain confirmation of if one or more of them had the missing pieces. I failed. Eventually, I pinned my hopes on your coming to me.”

Teg continued out the door. “I’m not doing much good here. Let me go and see if, maybe, just maybe, part of that thingie got dropped in the reception hall when the extraction agents were making their retreat.”

Peg put her knitting away. “I’ll come help you. I’ve always been good at finding dropped contact lens and stray earrings.”

When they were alone, beginning what Teg suspected would be a fruitless survey, Peg said softly, “Teg, do you think that Sapphire Wind had something to do with creating the events that brought our young inquisitors here?”

Teg considered. “How? By its own admission, it is unable to leave this location.”

“But it also admits it has been able to ‘research.’ What if it did something to make certain that when the three started searching, they wouldn’t find anything unless they came here?”

“Interesting theory,” Teg admitted. She knelt to inspect a glint of metal within a small heap of crumbled stone. “So no cure would be found for Grunwold’s father’s illness. Vereez’s sister would stay lost. Same with Xerak’s master. Sort of a curse, maybe? Seems harsh.”

“From our point of view, maybe, but think of how Sapphire Wind feels. It saved hundreds of lives—but by trapping them. It’s trapped, too. Stuck alone in this ruin except for some monsters.”

“When you put it that way,” Teg said, “I almost understand.” She pulled a package of dental picks from a side pocket of her pack and probed around something caught within the matrix of burnt detritus that layered the floor.

“Did you actually find it?” Peg asked, her voice rising in hope and astonishment.

“No, wrong shape, but . . .  Get out that inch paintbrush, will you? Use it to sweep off where I’ve loosened the muck.”

Peg did, clearing as Teg continued to pry up detritus from around the shape. What Teg had found seemed to be a piece of jewelry, the center portion of which was an undistinguished looking piece of pockmarked black stone set in gold. The gold setting included extrusions, so that the whole looked like a stylized sun with wavy rays. Upon closer inspection, Teg noticed that at the end of each “ray” was a stylized hook. The solar disk was bordered with multifaceted eyes, each of which was set with minute, glittering gems in a variety of colors.

“I recognize that!” Peg gasped. “That’s the amulet the blue jay wizard held up, the one that shot out those yellow light ropes.”

Teg grinned. “I think you’re right. I wonder if it still works?”

“We’ll ask Xerak—later. Let’s see what else we can find.”

Although they turned up the metal clasps of books long reduced to ash, nibs from pens, cracked glass inkwells, and other, less identifiable, detritus, they didn’t find anything that could be a part of the broken artifact.

“I thought we might find the skunk’s staff,” Teg said, “or part of it.”

“In stories, a wizard’s staff is often bound to him,” Peg said. “Maybe that’s the case here. Or maybe it went back to being a pen and was burned to a crisp.”

“Or is here . . . ” Teg said, thoughtfully, looking at her collection of junk with new interest. “We’ll ask Xerak.”

They persisted in their search until Vereez came to get them.

“I’m guessing you didn’t find it, right?”

Teg nodded and rolled stiffly to her feet. “And I don’t think we’re going to. At this point, I’d say either it’s been moved or it rolled somewhere else in this room.” She waved vaguely to indicate the vast space. “If that’s the case, I think we’d be better off doing as Xerak suggested—going to find the other pieces and coming back later.”

“How about you three?” Peg asked. “Have you come up with any brilliant plans?”

Vereez rolled her eyes. “We’ve gotten to the point where we’re arguing stupid details. We’ve agreed we’ll look down in the repository before we leave. The only question is do we start now or wait until tomorrow?”

“Now,” Teg said, knowing the question was mostly out of consideration for her bruises and Peg’s stiff middle. “Honestly, whatever was in those herbs you gave me to put in my bath yesterday has done an amazing job for my aches.”

“Mine, too,” Peg agreed. “I’m raring to go.”

“My mother . . . ” Vereez stumbled over the words, then pushed on. “She taught me herb lore. I . . . ”

Teg didn’t know if foxes could cry, but fox women certainly could and tears were flooding from Vereez’s dark eyes and matting her fur. Teg pulled her close and hugged her tightly. Vereez leaned gratefully into the embrace for a moment, then sniffed hard and pulled herself straight.

“I always thought Mother knew a lot more than what she claimed about herb lore. I guess I was right, huh? She knew a lot more about magic in general than she ever let on. She and my dad . . .  They’ve been . . . ”

“Lying?” Peg suggested firmly. “I guess that’s one way to put it.”

“Is there any other way?” Vereez said, ears pinning back as sorrow surged into anger. “Is there? The way they talked about their lives, how they met . . .  They met young, in college. Mom said she loved how Dad looked out for her . . .  She never said that this was while they were pulling off robberies! I . . .  I . . .  I just don’t know what to think!”

“Until you can talk to them,” Peg said, “give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they were dishonest. Maybe they did things they later were ashamed of. Maybe they wanted to remake their lives, and maybe they meant to tell you someday, when they thought you would be old enough to understand.”

“Maybe!” Vereez snapped—quite literally, as a fox might when biting through a rabbit’s neck. “Or maybe they’re just hypocrites, holding me up to standards of behavior that they never bothered with themselves.”

Teg, remembering what Vereez had confided in her, stepped in before Vereez’s anger led her to say more than she intended. “You both have good points. Vereez, think about it. Whatever your parents’ reasons, you’ve now learned something that will be valuable to you if you need to make them answer your questions. Calm down.”

Vereez’s ears slowly began to perk again. “You’re right, Teg. I did. Whatever reason they hid their past from me, they’re not going to want it to get out now. Prominent bankers with a past as ‘extraction agents’ as Sapphire Wind so politely put it. Hah!”

She looked ready to charge off that very moment.

“Hang on. You’ll be in a far better situation to ask questions if we learn more about your missing sister from Sapphire Wind,” Teg went on. “That may be why Hettua Shrine sent you here. Trust me. It’s always better to save questions for those things you can’t figure out on your own. Easier to trust the answers, too, if you have the means to cross-check.”

Peg nodded. “Teg’s tactics are sound. What’s to keep your parents from continuing to deny they know anything? Better if you can ask something more to the point.”

“You’re right,” Vereez said. “You’re both right. I promise, no running off like a snake/chicken”—the translation spell garbled at this point, as if uncertain which word to supply and settling for giving both—“with my head bitten off. Shall we tell the boys to stop arguing and go after some honestly in your face monsters?”

“Not quite yet,” Teg said. “I’ve found a few items I want to ask Xerak to check over. Who knows? They might be useful.”

A few minutes later, Xerak was holding the blue jay wizard’s amulet flat on the palm of his left hand, while holding his right hand over it, palm down. He finished chanting a long string of syllables the translation spell did not—or could not—translate. The amulet rose off his palm and hung, gently spinning in the space between his palms. Xerak closed his eyes, concentrated hard, then let the spell lapse.

“It’s been damaged,” he said, holding it out to Teg, “but it should still work—at least as to its most basic ability.”

“Which is?” Teg asked.

“See how the center of the amulet resembles a multilegged creature?” Xerak asked. “It’s stylized, but it reminds me of a creature we call a geetark. They extrude liquid that solidifies into a sort of thread, and use that to trap their prey.”

“We have an entire class of creatures like that,” Teg said. “We call them spiders. Do your geetark really have eyes all around their body?”

“Of course,” Xerak said. “Don’t yours?”

“Nope,” Peg said. “They only have eyes in front. When we first found this, I thought it was a stylized sun disk, so how about we call this a sun spider?”

“Well,” Xerak began, “geetark don’t have much to do with the sun. In fact, they’re actually cavern dwellers, but . . . ”

“Isn’t there a type that is associated with volcanoes?” Vereez put in. “I remember finding that fascinating.”

“Hold on,” Grunwold interrupted. “Time later for comparative biology. Xerak, what will that amulet do?”

“It should shoot out binding ropes, just like Sapphire Wind showed us the blue jay wizard doing in the vision. There would be limits, according to how much magical energy the amulet has stored, but it could be a very useful addition to our arsenal.”

Teg held it out. “Then you’d better take it. I certainly don’t have any magical energy.”

Xerak shook his head. “You don’t need to have mana of your own to use this. That’s the advantage to amulets and talismans. They store their own energy. You can use them as tools to do magic, just like you can use the ‘flashlights’ to make light.”

He used the English word with self-conscious pride, having gone out of his way to learn it when he realized that the concept of the device, if not what made it work, was familiar to the humans.

“What else can the sun spider amulet do?” Peg asked.

“I can’t be certain,” Xerak replied, “without time to work a detailed analysis, and the facilities to do so. The spell I just did is my limit without additional material. At a guess, the amulet might be able to create or summon an actual sun spider, perhaps even one of a monstrous size. In the case of creation, the amulet itself usually serves as a”—the translation spell frizzled for a moment then settled on—“template. However, in most cases, at least some of the power for such a large working would need to come from the caster. Anyhow, with the amulet probably being damaged, and no longer allied with a specific wizard, I doubt it could either summon or create.”

“Supplying magical energy is probably beyond me,” Teg said, turning the sun spider amulet over in her hands, admitting to herself that she was reluctant to give her treasure to someone else. Archeologists always have to hand over their finds. It would be so cool to keep one for once. “Still, I like the idea of being able do a Spiderman with web shooters. That could be useful in an emergency. If you don’t mind, I’ll hold onto it.”

Xerak was clearly confused, so doubtless the translation spell had garbled what she’d said, but he seized on the important point. “Yes. You keep it. Save it for an emergency. In its current condition, it may only work once.”

The young wizard looked tired, his mane limp and stringy. Remembering how Inehem had needed to be carried after she’d done complicated magic, Teg decided to hold onto the rest of her and Peg’s finds—which doubtless were mostly junk—for later examination.

“All right,” she said. “What’s the plan?”

“Many of the areas we’re going through,” Grunwold said, indicating a rough map he’d drawn, “will permit us to walk two abreast, but we’d be crowded. So we’re going to go single file. Vereez and Xerak will go in front. I’ll take the rear.”

He paused and Teg guessed that he wasn’t happy about this, but had been argued into agreeing. Vereez continued.

“If you humans agree, we want Peg after Xerak, since she knows how to handle a sword. Teg and Meg will be in the middle. Spears are going to be a lot less useful in close quarters, so we’re leaving all but Xerak’s behind. We do have machetes if you want them.”

Teg suggested, “Let me go right after Peg. Meg after me. Oh, and I have a question for Sapphire Wind.”

Meg’s head tilted to show that Sapphire Wind was listening, and Teg went on.

“If the creatures roaming through here are guardians, can you control them? You seem to be a sort of guardian yourself.”

“I am and I am not,” Sapphire Wind replied. “But, to answer your immediate question, if we encounter actual guardians, there is indeed a chance I will be able to dissuade them from acting. However, there are many forces roaming this ruin that are not guardians but are, instead, magics released from their bindings.”

“Like in the stories the inquisitors told us,” Teg said. “Darn! I was hoping those were exaggerations.”

“So were the rest of us,” Vereez added with a tense laugh.

“Sapphire Wind is going to exit Meg,” Grunwold went on, “but will accompany us in an insubstantial form. It will do what it can to divert guardians, as well as undo wards and locks. It will also serve as our guide.”

“I,” Xerak said, “will be able to perceive Sapphire Wind fairly easily. Vereez will be able to do so if she concentrates. The rest of you will, I fear, be unable to see it unless you concentrate hard. That’s another reason for putting us up front.”

“Meg may be able to see me,” Sapphire Wind said unexpectedly. “She is, at least for now, attuned to me.”

“I’m as eager as anyone to start exploring,” Peg said, “but we’ve been on the go for a while, and I could use some lunch.”

Remembering how beat Xerak had looked, Teg was quick to second Peg’s proposal, although she was itching to go deeper into the building, where the chance of significant finds would go up. She remembered a project manager who had gotten so absorbed in the pit house he was digging that it took a second pointing out to him that above ground the snow was approaching white-out conditions to get him to stop.

I can certainly be less obsessive than that!

When they resumed their exploration, Teg carried one of the machetes. She placed the sun spider amulet in her left pocket, where she could easily grab hold of it with her free hand. Xerak had shown her how to activate the amulet, but she hoped she wouldn’t need to use it. She might as easily tangle up her allies as an enemy—and she wasn’t at all certain she could even make it work.

As Sapphire Wind led them in the direction of the repository, the rippling tide of destruction that had flowed through the Library eliminated any chance that the vision they’d seen in the Font of Sight would make their surroundings familiar. Bookshelves had toppled domino fashion, one knocking over the next. Fire had swept through, finding ample fuel in dry paper, vellum, and wood. Even though decades had passed, an acrid reek still hung in the air.

“Grunwold, you’re going to need to come up here after all,” Xerak said. “I’m going to need both your and Vereez’s help to move some of this stuff.”

“Right,” Grunwold said. He lifted Heru off his shoulder, and held the mini pterodactyl balanced on one hand. “Peg, take rear guard. I’ll have Heru watch behind you, but you’ll need to be the brains of the operation.”

Heru made a blatting sound that was anything but complimentary, but hopped over to sit on Peg’s shoulder without protest.

Peg’s eyes widened in momentary astonishment at finding herself so nominated, but nodded briskly. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Teg handed her machete to Meg. “I’d better help the kids out. I’m good at seeing how things fit together. I may be able to save us from a collapse.”


She was coming out from under where she’d been inspecting a chaotic pile of partially burned shelving and charred textbooks when she caught a flicker of motion as something emerged from a layer of ash atop a more-or-less erect shelf unit.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing. The motion had resolved into flock of flaccid yellowish-grey pancake creatures that were moving by slowly flapping their sides, rather as if they were bats that had figured out how to manage without the mouselike middle section.

“Abau!” Meg called. “Watch out! They’ll blind you if they can.”

How can she know? Teg thought, then realized that Sapphire Wind must have supplied the information.

There was no time for Teg to retrieve her machete—even if Meg wasn’t already using it to poke at a hovering abau. Instead, Teg settled for a chunk of charred wood about the length of her arm. It wasn’t a cool weapon, not the like coppery-bright, slightly curved blades Vereez was wielding, but it was enough to keep the things from reaching her face. Grunwold proved that his antlers weren’t just ornamental when one of the abau got inside his guard. Xerak demonstrated that his spear staff wasn’t just meant for magic, poking holes in the abau with almost surgical precision.

But Heru was the real hero of that particular battle. Gliding above the attackers, he stabbed out with his long neck, pinpointing an area on the creatures’ backs that somehow disabled their ability to flap. Once they flopped to the floor, the abau were helpless enough that they weren’t even worth squashing.

“Do we kill them?” Peg asked, her gaze darting between the feebly moving abau and the surrounding stacks, in case anything else unpleasant was awaiting them.

“If you do not,” Meg said, “Sapphire Wind can establish control over them, and through them their associates. Abau are apparently among the Library’s guardians, although not the most intelligent. Their usual job is to deal with accumulated dust and keep watch for vandalism.”

Although the band was victorious against the abau, their next opponents were far more vicious. Under Teg’s direction, Xerak and Grunwold had been working to shove open a door that had burned while about six inches open, its hinges transformed into slag, its wood heat-hardened. Once they forced the door fully open, they were able to move into a pleasantly spacious area that had probably been a reading room. There they paused for a break, seating themselves on one side of the nearest of the long tables that, with their associated benches, were the room’s primary furnishings.

Teg was sipping from her canteen when she felt, almost as much as heard, a deep, rumbling growl. She glanced at the three inquisitors and saw that each had frozen in midmotion. Heru, who had just accepted half a cookie from Peg, froze, the crescent dangling ludicrously from his bill.

“What is . . .  ?” Teg started to ask, when Xerak pointed with his spear staff. Teg’s first impression was that the creatures were skulking out from under the long tables at the farther end of the room. Then, incredulously, she realized that the forms were materializing from shadows that unfolded to become four-legged monsters.

The new arrivals were the general size and build of a Doberman pinscher, with the same deep, broad chest, and trim but powerful hips. These monstrosities, however, were scaled like snakes and possessed heads akin to those of goats, with similar creepy, square-pupiled eyes, and sharp, short, very pointy horns. Five of them padded forth, their claws clicking against the stone floors. Their scales were varicolored, in hues ranging from black through bronze, into a golden tan. The one nearest to Teg was tiger striped in bronze and gold. When it snarled, it revealed fangs a tiger would have been proud of.

“Uh, Meg,” Peg said, “can Sapphire Wind tell those dobergoats we’re invited guests?”

Meg’s lack of a reply, and the way she was gripping the chunk of wood she’d traded Teg for the machete, was a reply in itself. Either Sapphire Wind couldn’t, or doing so was going to take time.

“Dobergoats?” Vereez said, slightly shaking her head as if the translation spell was doing something odd. “These summiss are very dangerous. Stay back, ladies. Xerak?”

“Working on it . . .  Cover me. Gonna take a bit.” He stepped back behind the front line, hands wrapped around his spear staff, muttering under his breath.

Teg thrust forward to stand between Grunwold and Vereez, machete firmly gripped in both hands. She was surprised to find that she was relatively calm, her focus on the growling creature stiff-legging toward her.

Tiger, Tiger burning bright, her back brain chanted. Guess we’re gonna get into a fight.

The dobergoats charged as one. Vereez, better able to bring her twin swords into play in this more open area, distracted the two at her end. Grunwold took the two at the other. That left Teg with her striped “friend.” Probably the only thing that kept her from getting charged and bitten right off was that the dobergoat was just smart enough to realize that she looked—or maybe it was smelled—odd. Instead of charging as its associates had done, it continued its methodical stalking.

Teg held her machete in both hands as she might have when clearing brush, and spoke at the creature. “Yeah, billy goat pup, I’m weird. I bet I’d taste really, really bad. You don’t want to risk that or that I’ll cut you when you’re gagging on my taste.”

The dobergoat growled more deeply. Teg had cats, not dogs, but she’d seen enough dogs in action—her dog-owning colleagues often brought them along on extended field projects—to recognize the signs of a pack creature letting the mob overrule whatever common sense it possessed. When it charged, she was ready, and swung at it with a will.

Her machete’s sharp edge caught the dobergoat solidly at the join of shoulder and neck but, instead of biting deeply, it only nicked the scaled hide.

Great, not like a snake: thicker, heavier hide. Not surprised. Not surprised.

She knew no one was available to come to her aid. Xerak’s chanting hadn’t stopped. Vereez and Grunwold had opponents of their own. She could hear Peg shouting and Heru screeching. The dobergoat was continuing its lunge for her, going below the blade, probably planning to clamp its jaws around her left arm. Teg braced herself, determined not to scream, but a scream squeezed through her lips nonetheless.

No. That wasn’t her. It was the dobergoat. Meg had walloped it solidly on the back, right above the tail, with her piece of burned wood. The tiger-striped dobergoat yelped, and backed away, tail between its legs in a very canine manner, eyeing its new weird opponent with a dangerous mixture of fear and fury.

“Thanks!” Teg managed to gasp, getting her machete ready for the thing’s next rush. She spared a glance for the others. Heru had gone to aid Grunwold. Between the two of them, one dobergoat was down and probably not getting up again, while the other was backing toward one of the tables, bleeding from a bunch of cuts, including one near an eye that was probably Heru’s doing.

Vereez was dealing with the largest of the pack, a muscular, tawny creature with brilliant green eyes. Peg was fencing with a mostly bronze diamond-backed dobergoat, not so much trying to harm it as to keep it from both herself and Vereez. As Teg watched in horror, it darted at Vereez’s tail in a distraction tactic.

Shouting, “En garde, varlet!” Peg sprang forward, looking more like Errol Flynn than any many-times grandmother should, then skewered the creature where its foreleg merged into the torso. Teg expected the blade to bound off, but the point went in, the creature’s own rush at Peg pushing its body halfway up the blade. The creature fell, apparently skewered to whatever it used as a heart.

Peg held firmly onto her sword, but it twisted from her grip as the creature crashed to the ground. Perhaps the death of its comrade infuriated the tiger-striped dobergoat. It rallied and came rushing at Teg and Meg. Teg dreaded that this time she was about to get badly bitten, but she managed to hold her ground. The square-pupiled eyes were focused on her, the dobergoat was gathering itself for a leap, and then Xerak shouted a single loud syllable that sounded something like: “Now!”

The air rippled, and four of the five dobergoats vanished. The only one that remained was the one Peg had killed.

Typically, Grunwold muttered, “About time!” but the look he gave Xerak was pure pride.

“What did you do?” Peg asked. She was holding her right wrist, and looking a little green, but her voice held her usual curiosity.

“Banished them,” Xerak replied, reaching for his flask. “The way they appeared like that, they had to be summoned. I sent them back. Meg, ask Sapphire Wind if they’re likely to show up again.”

Meg, who had slid off her pack and was pulling out her first aid-kit, nodded. She paused, then said, “Sapphire Wind thinks not. We are in a restricted area, and those were meant to herd out intruders. Sapphire Wind will attempt to give us permission to be here.”

“Herd?” Vereez said. “They looked like they were going to do a lot more than escort us out.”

Meg sighed. “‘Meant to.’ Sapphire Wind did warn us that the damage to the Library systems would have had a deleterious effect on many of the guardians.” She turned her attention to Peg. “You’re holding that wrist, dear.”

“I think I sprained it,” Peg admitted sheepishly. “I didn’t expect my sword to go in so deeply, and when the dobergoat fell, it was heavy enough to twist the blade in my hand before I could let go.”

“Let me wrap it for you,” Meg said.

After Meg had wrapped the injured wrist, Peg insisted she was “just fine,” but Teg, seeing how Peg left her sword sheathed until needed, rather than carrying it at the ready as she had before, had doubts.

“Do we quit for the day?” Vereez said reluctantly. “We seem to keep getting into fights, and I don’t think it’s going to get easier as we move forward.”

“I think we should,” Grunwold agreed. “Sapphire Wind has hopefully made sure the abau and the dobergoats won’t continue to give us problems, so tomorrow shouldn’t be a repeat, right?”

“Let’s quit,” Peg stated in her best “no-nonsense Mom” voice. “Xerak’s hiding his exhaustion well, but he’s beat. I’ll admit, my wrist is aching. Let’s call it quits for now and come back tomorrow, refreshed.”

“Do we ‘camp’ here in the Library?” Teg asked. “I know we brought gear, but I’m not sure any of us would get a good night’s sleep. This place is too dangerous. Even if we set watches, it’s likely we’d keep getting woken up to beat off whatever comes crawling out of the rubble.”

Reluctantly, the inquisitors agreed that hiking back to Slicewind made sense. Sapphire Wind promised they would have no difficulty reentering the building the next day. Indeed, Teg had the oddest feeling that the building watched wistfully as one by one they passed out through the doorway.


The next morning, much invigorated, the six returned to the ruins. This time Sapphire Wind opened the door for them, swirling and bobbing in obvious welcome.

Once they were safely inside and the doors closed behind them, Meg extended a hand toward the blue cyclone shape and made a beckoning gesture.

“Well, come along. You can’t talk in that form.”

“Did you rest well?” Sapphire Wind asked, using Meg’s body. “I hope so. I will once again lead the way. Stay alert. I have patrolled the route we took yesterday, and it remains safe, but once we leave the reading room, I cannot promise safety.”

“Never make a promise knowing you can’t keep it,” Peg said cheerily. A night’s rest and a liberal application of yet another ointment from Vereez’s med kit had done a lot for her wrist, although she still kept it snuggly wrapped.

They reached the reading room without incident. In the way of such things, the distance they had labored to cross the day before now seeming impossibly short. After getting the door on the far side of the reading room open, they were faced with a large area in which partially burned books had fallen from tilting shelves into irregular drifts of pages, ash, and covers.

Meg moaned aloud, heard herself and blushed. “I’m sorry. Bad memories. This looks like the children’s section after school-visit days.”

“If the children were pyros,” Peg added, nodding agreement.

“Still,” Grunwold said, “at least it doesn’t look as if we’re going to need to move fallen shelf units. Heru, glide through there and see if you wake up any monsters.”

“Right, Grun!” the xuxu croaked, and launched itself from his shoulder. The occasional beats of his wings caused ash to billow. Vereez sneezed. However, even after Heru made a few daring landings atop bookshelves, nothing showed any interest, unfriendly or otherwise.

“Let’s go,” Xerak said, when Heru was back on Grunwold’s shoulder. “Sapphire Wind indicates that we need to cross this room, then bear left.”

The area to the left proved to be more or less a continuation of the ash-filled room, but when they came to the next turn, a heap of partially incinerated tomes had drifted to block the aisle. Xerak poked at them with the tip of his spear, but Vereez, impatient with this latest delay, hunkered down to grab hold of some of the larger books and toss them aside.

“Careful,” Meg called, clearly appalled, “some of those might be repairable. I see intact sheets, entire intact segments!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Vereez chuckled. After that, rather than grabbing and tossing, she picked up the next stack, and rose to set it to one side.

As she was setting it down, from a gap that had probably once been an aisle, shot a tubular shape the same ivory-yellow of good parchment. For a brief moment, Teg thought it was a scroll, but no scroll would have traveled arrow straight, nor anchored itself so firmly in Vereez’s thigh. What was worse was that when the “scroll” hit, it started wriggling, as if trying to burrow deeper in.

Vereez, who was wearing heavy trousers under her tunic, turned, stared down at her leg in disbelief, then grabbed the “scroll” with both hands and tugged. The thing wriggled again, then bent so that its rear end poked at Vereez’s hand. Teg saw the stinger that emerged and bent against the thick leather of Vereez’s leather gloves.

“Satefent!” Xerak shouted. “Back up everyone. Those things are vicious.”

He grabbed Vereez around her waist and half carried her away. By the time they’d retreated to the reading room, Vereez was swallowing whimpers of pain.

“I can’t . . .  get it . . .  out!” she managed, spacing the words around tugs. “It’s . . .  digging in!”

Peg called from behind them. “I stomped another of those book worms, and that seems to be the only one left. I’m on my way.”

“Grunwold!” Xerak ordered. “I’m going to pull the book worm straight. You slice it off, close as you can to the head.”

Grunwold’s large brown eyes were so wide that the whites were visible all around, but he dropped his sword and pulled out his belt knife without comment. Vereez let Xerak set her down on one of the tables, and take over her grip on the book worm. Her eyes were wild, and a thin line of foam from panicked panting lined her long fox’s jaw, but otherwise she was admirably controlled. This didn’t mean she rejected the hands Peg held out for her to hold, an action which effectively blocked Vereez’s view of Grunwold’s descending blade.

Teg wished she had an excuse to look away. Although Xerak had pulled the creature straight, so that it could no longer sting, the book worm was wriggling hard, reminding her of eels she’d seen pushing into mud or holes in reefs for cover. She swallowed a gag.

Meg said, “Teg, you watch the door we came through. I’ll watch the other. This would be a perfect time for something else to sneak up on us.”

Teg nodded, feeling guilty for the relief that flooded her. Right now, she’d be happy for a pack of dobergoats. They were at least honestly nasty. These book worms were insidious.

A few moments later, she heard a squishing sound and glanced back to see Grunwold stomping on the book worm, which was now oozing a greenish-blue ichor from one end, into a pulp on the floor. Then she made the mistake of looking over at Vereez. Part of the thing still wriggled, against her leg. Red blood mixed with the blue-green ichor and Teg felt her gorge rise. She didn’t throw up—quite—but if she’d eaten a heavier breakfast she probably would have made a real mess.

“Orange bottle,” Vereez managed through clamped jaws. “My kit.”

Xerak found it, opened it, sniffed it, and nodded before pouring a little of the contents where the book worm’s head met Vereez’s thigh. This caused the jaws to unclamp, and the rest of the thing to drop to the floor. Before Grunwold stomped on it, Teg saw that the book worm had a mouth like a lamprey’s, with numerous teeth set around a circular opening, with the added bonus of a long blue tongue that was red with Vereez’s blood.

“My mother’s formula, again,” Vereez muttered.

Once her leg was bound up, Vereez insisted they continue on. Teg had a feeling the young woman was fighting some sort of battle with her absent mother. If Inehem hadn’t given up, not even when she was so exhausted she couldn’t walk, Vereez wasn’t going to whimper and insist on going back to the ship, even with a fresh hole dug in her leg.

Creatures weren’t the only dangers. Moving the remnants of the massive shelf units, furniture, and other, less identifiable, bits of detritus strained both muscles and tempers. Everyone acquired numerous bruises and scrapes. Grunwold only narrowly escaped having an antler tine snapped off when Xerak let go of his end of a huge shelf before Grunwold’s head was completely out of the way.

Nonetheless, they succeeded in clearing a passage to the hidden door that—so the vision had shown them—would lead to the stairway down into the repository.


Once they had reached the hidden door that concealed the stairway down to the repository, Sapphire Wind collaborated with Xerak and Peg. Using a combination of magic and Peg’s surprisingly impressive skill with a lock pick, they undid the locks and wards that had so exhausted Inehem when the extraction agents had made their incursion.

Then Sapphire Wind activated some low-level lights that illuminated the stone treads. These were not worn smooth with repeated use as Teg had subconsciously expected them to be, but were in good condition, with roughened gouges cut into the stone to reduce the chance of slipping. However, while the light helped keep them from missing their step, it also accentuated every shadow, so that Teg found herself bracing against attacks that didn’t come. Her already strained nerves were jangling by the time they reached the repository.

“Damn!” Vereez said. The word was English, picked up from Peg and Teg. Meg rarely swore, considering profanity an indication of a lack of imagination.

Is it imaginative to swear in an alien language, though? Teg thought as she eased her way past Peg, between Vereez and Xerak, so she could get a better look. She realized that she was letting her archeologist’s fervor dominate, but she didn’t want everyone tromping ahead through the ruined area before she had a chance to assess the site.

As Teg had expected, the repository, which they had last seen so tidy and orderly in the vision supplied by the Font of Sight, was as wrecked as the Library’s upper floors had been. Whatever force had rocked the Library had ripped the units that held the numerous safe deposit boxes from the walls. Additionally, there was evidence that something large and strong had pushed its way through since the collapse, shoving enough of the toppled safe deposit boxes erect to create a jagged and erratic pathway through the debris.

“I wonder how whatever did that got through the locks?” Vereez asked.

“Maybe it was down here all along?” Xerak offered.

Sapphire Wind spoke through Meg. “If whatever did that was one of the Library’s elite guardians, the locks would not have stopped it.”

That announcement caused a thoughtful pause in the general move forward, during which time Teg finished easing her way to the front.

“Is this area safe?” Peg asked, then forced a chuckle. “I guess what I mean is ‘Is it any more dangerous than upstairs?’”

Xerak did what Teg was beginning to recognize as a lesser spell, because he made fewer motions before the spearhead on his staff started to glow with a dark amber light. He moved the spearhead back and forth over the area in front of him. Teg had crowded close enough that she could see when his tense muscles relaxed.

“Based on what I just did,” Xerak said, pulling his spear staff upright and leaning against it, “I think we might be safer down here than we were above. Those safe deposit boxes were intended to keep whatever was stored within them not only safe from being stolen . . . ”

Grunwold snorted what sounded very much like “Yeah, right . . . ”

“. . . but to keep their magical energies from mingling with each other. For that reason, we shouldn’t encounter creatures like the enhanced versions of dobergoats and abau we fought over the past few days, since they probably owe some of their abilities to rogue magical energies.”

“Wait,” Teg said. “You’re telling me those were natural creatures?”

“Certainly,” Xerak said, “all but the book worms. Those are typically found in large libraries, and are created to deal with vermin. I’ll admit, the one that got Vereez was the largest I’ve ever seen.”

Vereez added, “The dobergoats were nastier than their natural counterparts, but perfectly normal creatures. My parents have some that patrol the grounds of our House of Fortune.”

Teg decided she really didn’t want to know more.

“And what do you think made that?” Peg pointed again to the trail through the debris.

“Well,” Meg said, clearly speaking for herself, not for Sapphire Wind, “we did have the theory that the reason neither Sapphire Wind nor Teg could find the piece of the artifact that we know was dropped by the escaping extraction agents was because something carried it away. I would say the probability that this is what happened just rose.”

“Before we go charging off after it,” Teg put in, “we should check for hazards.”

Xerak nodded. “I can use magic. You use your archeologist powers. The rest of you will need to rely on common sense. I realize that won’t be easy for Grunwold, but he can try.”

Grunwold made as if to throw a chunk of masonry at Xerak, but his ears were perked and he was grinning. “I’ll keep watch over the stairwell. We certainly didn’t manage to deal with all the things haunting the upper floors, and, as Sapphire Wind just reminded us, some of the guardian creatures can open locks.”

Thanks to whatever had come plowing through, they had to do minimal shifting of wreckage and moving of rubble to get through the area with the safe deposit boxes. Once they were beyond the numerous subsections built to accommodate ranks of boxes, the level of visible destruction dropped dramatically.

“Probably,” Teg said, inspecting the join of wall and ceiling, “because these corridors weren’t built, as such. It looks to me as if they were cut from the bedrock, then the stone was smoothed and dressed to make it look prettier. I’d love to know how they managed to . . . ”

“Magic,” Peg interrupted her. “By magic or by using some magical critter. You’re got to remember, Teg. Hortas or whatever are completely possible here.”

“‘Hortas’? Why does that sound familiar?”

Star Trek,” Meg said, surprising Teg more than a little. “Classic version. Episode called ‘Devil in the Dark,’ if I recall correctly.”

She raised an eyebrow in a perfect Spock imitation. “Fascinating.”

“I didn’t follow most of that,” Vereez cut in, “but if what you’re saying is that these corridors should be structurally sound, then let’s get going. I have a pretty good memory, and if we can’t find our way to that place our parents went by conventional tracking, I think I can remember most of the turns those extraction agents took.”

Vereez took point, with Xerak just behind her, and Teg replacing Peg as third. At first they did trail the marks left by what Peg dubbed the “stone plow,” but eventually they had to reply on Vereez’s memory. Sapphire Wind admitted, when queried, that it was feeling muddled, perhaps because it had expended considerable energy on locks, lights, and communication.

Meg said, “We probably shouldn’t count on Sapphire Wind, so it can reserve its power for locks and wards.”

At last Vereez showed them where a closed door blended surprisingly well into the surrounding stonework. “I think this is the door that leads to that second stairwell down. Is everybody ready?”


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Framed