Across the Long Sea (18 page)

“Might as well be.” The threshold between temple and stairway was arched above and below, an oval set into the northmost wall. Repeating sigils decorated the lintel. The etchings were cold and dark, but Avani could feel the magic simmering just beneath the surface of the stone. “The brothers dose them to make them sleep, you know.”

Avani looked away from the lintel and down at the pitifully still forms decorating the rushes. She'd been trying very hard to steel herself against shock and horror, to react as healer and not parent, but the lad closest to her foot was as fair and blond as her Liam, and favored with a similar sharp chin. Pustules disfigured his brow and cheeks, leaking pink fluid. Avani could hear the death rattle in his lungs.

She turned quickly away. Russel grunted knowingly.

“The sleep is so they don't suffer,” Avani diagnosed. “Some infusion of belladonna or thorn-­berry, by the color of their lips. Tricky,
ai
, but not uncommon in the sickroom.”

“Mayhap. But once they bed on the temple floor, my lady, they're not like to wake again.” When Russel crossed the threshold, the staircase slowly grew bright; a diffuse mage-­light issued from the hewn steps, illuminating the steep descent. Avani paused long enough to commit to memory the shape of the newly glowing sigil on the lintel, then hurried after.

“Surely you don't believe the theists are helping the afflicted into the Goddess's arms?” she demanded of Russel's stubborn shoulders.

Russel's dismissal was muffled by dusty tapestries hung in intervals along the staircase. “But what are they doing, other than wrapping blisters and dosing sleep? Clogging the streets of the city with their infernal smoke?”

The mage-­light shone on a plain wooden door at the foot of the staircase. Russel knocked twice, tried the latch, and pushed the door open.

She wheeled in the doorway, crossed her arms over her chest, and awarded Avani a narrow stare.

“What I think, is, the theists are over their heads, aye? Wilhaiim's without its vocent, and the temple's helpless against the Worm, and the tonsured brothers are easing the death blow”—­Russel mimed a short, forward strike, bumping her knuckles against Avani's side—­“but there's no one left in this city knows how to rally a defense.”

“Mal's no healer,” Avani retorted. She ducked past the soldier. “His office is death, and the making and unraveling of it.”

“Life and death. Two sides of a coin!” Russel argued, striding after. “His Majesty said you were stubborn, my lady, and I respect that. No one wants to be second choice in a bad spot, but never did I believe you'd a heart of stone, walking unaffected through the temple as you did, else I never would have agreed to smuggle you in through the Maiden gate under the theists' very noses—­” she broke off, strangling on a sound somewhere between a gasp and a moan.

Avani had expected a modest space beneath the temple footprint, a cellar or small catacombs turned study. Instead she looked upon a cavern wider by far than the building above, hollowed from the earth by the steady drip of time and the stubborn work of mortal hands. The walls shed an unnatural amber light, far warmer to look upon than any mage-­light she'd yet encountered, gentler on the scholar's eye.

It was a proper library, as neatly organized as the king's own, tomes arranged in glass-­fronted bookcases, scrolls rolled and tied and shelved with equal care. The cases ran front to back and side to side in ordered rows not unlike the precise arrangement of dying children above, evidence of a scrupulous mind. The air was uncommonly dry, cold as Mal's laboratory.

Avani knew with an uneasy certainty that she stood amongst an unmatched collection of long-­collected lore.

“Goddess take me.” She puffed a breath in disbelief, and not a single mote of dust stirred in response. “That so many books even exist in the world.” She wanted to touch every single volume, unroll each scroll and spend untold hours devouring previously unlooked for knowledge.

Russel made another strangled sound and Avani struggled past awe, recollecting herself with effort. The other woman was frozen in a half-­bow, one knee on the carpeted floor, one hand fisted against her throat. It was not quite the deep obeisance one presented royalty, but it was very close.

Russel's mouth worked beneath her mask. The robed man standing over her clicked his tongue against his teeth in dismay or exasperation.

“Stand, soldier,” he said. “And move away. You're blocking the door.”

He'd obviously been on his way out as they'd come spilling into the library, and Avani too overwhelmed to take note. The long sleeves of his brown robes were folded around his hands as if for warmth, his cheeks pink over a gray-­shot beard. The mage-­light gave his yellow eyes a golden sheen.

Russel rose as abruptly as if she'd been kicked.

“Masterhealer,” she managed. “I didn't see you there.”

“I gathered that.” The theist turned his lambent stare on Avani. Avani realized she knew him, recalled his face from blurred memories of Mal's sickroom.

“My lady,” he said, and Avani knew he remembered her as well. “I trust you're well?”

“Aye.” And because Russel appeared too rigid to manage fresh speech, Avani mustered a smile. “We've come seeking a friend.”

“Deval.” He nodded. “You'll find him halfway past the reading bench, near the bones. He's been expecting you, I believe. If you'll excuse me?”

The Masterhealer stepped around Russel, the hem of his robes whispering across carpet. Russel flinched as he passed, then jerked again when he closed the door between them. She looked green as if she once again stood in the Maiden's foul flow.

“There's my commission gone,” she said, hoarse. Then she shook her head, curls bouncing into disarray. “His Majesty will have me sent down for stupidity and a wagging tongue.”

Avani looked thoughtfully at the closed door. “He didn't appear much distempered.”

“He's a face like a still pool, depths unplumbed. Believe you me, he'll be on his way to king's audience now.” Russel's jaw bunched. “Naught to do about it. Come on. Let's find your friend.”

They walked together amongst the books with quiet reverence. The cases were taller than Avani, reaching nearly to the top of Russel's head. The glass gleamed, well polished. Avani noted the keyholes on each cabinet, and the sigils carved into the face of each shelf. The temple's collection of knowledge was guarded as fiercely as any treasure.

The reading bench was in fact a table; old, scarred, and ink stained. A straight pier of wood made of many joined, mismatched tables. Avani and Russel followed it through to the center of the library, stepping around chairs as varied and battered as the bench pieces.

Deval had chosen the most comfortable of seats, an overstuffed straight-­backed stool softened with two flat pillows. He sat cross-­legged on the stool, elbows on the bench, stylus clutched in one hand, books and scrolls scattered across the surface of the bench.

“The bones,” Russel murmured. She tipped her head, pointing her chin at the ceiling, but Avani had already seen them, entire skeletons of every size and species hung like macabre puppets on silver wire from the ceiling, turning the library's domed apex into a ghoulish theater. Avani identified the tiny fruit bat, floating on miniature ivory bone wings, and the fanged cheval, the wolf and the lamb, the snake and the pheasant and the crowned stag, his bleached hooves a hand's breadth from striking the surface of the bench.

There were human skeletons, as well. Three men and two women and an infant with mal-­formed limbs. A boar's skeleton with dark pinions attached, a two-­headed snake, and a child-­sized humanoid, finger bones stretched too long, fangs gleaming in a narrow jaw.

“Barrowman,” Avani said, and Deval looked up.

“Avani,” he said, lined browned face registering surprise and pleasure. He set the stylus on the bench and rose, ducking his head to avoid dangling tarsal bones. He smiled, and held his arms wide in welcome.

Avani took the last few steps without conscious decision, and threw herself into Deval's warm embrace. He clasped her firmly, and she buried her nose in his shoulder, snuffling the welcome perfume of sandalwood and spice and enamel paint and ink. Deval patted her back, rumbling low in his throat, and pretended not to notice the tears she wiped on his
salwar
.

“I expected you after sunup,” he said into her hair. “Or I would have come upstairs to meet you.”

“And spare us this Fair of books and bones?” Russel said, dry. “This sepulcher of study?”

“Yes.” Deval set Avani gently aside, tapped a knuckle to his nose. “Sit, sit. Take off your masks, they're of no use here. Don't upset the inkpot, that's dearly bought.”

“Indigo,” Avani agreed, glancing at the ink on the tip of Deval's abandoned stylus. “Very dearly bought.” She tugged the mask from her mouth, breathing out a huff of relief at the brush of cool air across her lips. She chose a ladder-­back chair and settled with relief, then drew the nearest book close, curious.

Russel yanked her own mask away, then stood at attention beneath a bony, dangling otter form.

“We've not much time,” the soldier warned. “Especially now I've run my mouth. Have you got the king's herbs, my lord?”

“Certainly.” Deval dug beneath his
salwar
, then set a small leather pouch on the table. “Spices for his morning ale, and for his bedsat wine, to help him sleep and ease the rheumatoids.”

“That's done, then. Speak the rest quickly.”

Avani felt the vibration of Russel's unease all the way across the floor, a gray cast to the woman's usually pleasant features.

“Note-­taking?” Avani tapped a finger on the book she'd gathered, then again on parchment decorated with Deval's flowing, familiar letterwork. She opened the book, scanned parchment gone yellow with age, found the print strange and impossible to read. “What language is this? Not the royal lingua.”

“Coastal shorthand.” Deval folded himself back onto his cushioned stool. “Very old and mostly forgotten, but for chart work or trade inventory. I learned some of it as a young boy, working the village pier. Enough to pick through a few of the oldest journals, though it's slow work.”

“Not here to nurse away the Worm, then,” Avani guessed. “Or at least not entirely.”

Deval bowed his head. He scrubbed his palms over his shorn skull. Avani saw weariness in the slump of his shoulders, and in the bruised flesh beneath his eyes.

“Have you lost your
jhi
?” he asked, suddenly stern. “Has your household blessing flown away, after all this time? And you, dressed in the black of flatland wizards?”

Avani rocked back. Deval's disapproval stung like a slap, unfair.

“Jacob goes where and as he likes,” she returned, sharp. “I'm no longer a child in need of a babysitter.” She slid Deval's parchment sideways, tapped it again. “What is this, uncle? This work you're doing for the king?” It was a guess, but she wasn't wrong, she saw the acknowledgment on his face.

He sighed and straightened and stretched, arching his back. Avani saw his nails were chewed down to the quick, black enamel paint peeling.

“It was only a notion,” he said. “A bit of childhood Lord Malachi recalled, and stuck in His Majesty's head. The sting of a sand flea, and the raised blisters after. It was only a notion, come to nothing.” Deval climbed to his feet. He rolled his notes into a neat sheaf, secured the scroll with a twist of leather, and tucked it under his arm. The inkpot he corked and stashed carefully in his belt pouch. “This way. Come.”

They walked along the bench, beneath dangling bones, toward the rear of the cavern. Avani couldn't help but drag her feet, lingering in front of glass cases, marveling. Most of the books were bound in calfskin or cloth, spines unmarked. At first glance Avani could determine no obvious order to the arrangement of the volumes on the shelves. It was Russel who solved the puzzle.

“By region,” she said. “The decoration on the hinges.”

Avani took a closer look at the nearest bookcase and saw that Russel was right. The bronze wings were stamped with stylized but easily recognized cartography. The closest three cases wore the grapevine of the northern flatland provinces. A few cases past and Avani recognized the six-­rayed desert sun.

“It seems an inefficient system,” said Avani. “There are more than a hundred volumes in this case alone.”

“The acolytes spend years learning the library,” Deval replied. “By the time they earn their robes they know it intimately. Come. Hurry.”

Avani jogged to keep up with the older man. He seemed suddenly affected by Russel's nervous energy, leading them at a quick trot between bookcases. They left the bench and bones behind, traveled more deeply into the maze of shelves and scroll racks. Avani, who had a solid head for directions above ground, and had learned to trust her instincts below as well, was soon well turned around.

“
Ai,
Deval,” she called, low and uncertain. “What are we doing? His Majesty didn't manufacture midnight excuses so we could play a game of hide-­and-­tag in a theists' library.”

Russel snorted agreement. Deval didn't bother to reply. He slipped between two gleaming cases, disappearing from sight. Avani hastened after, absurdly worried they'd be left behind and forgotten, lost beneath Wilhaiim's temple until Renault discovered their absence.

But Deval had stopped at the edge of the library, in a narrow space between a last row of shelves and the rough rock of the cavern wall. Avani stopped.

“Oh, then.” She whistled softly. “It's no wonder His Majesty looks like he's swallowed a snake. You might have just said, uncle.”

“No,” Deval said. “I'm here to see it's kept secret.”