With the book removed from my care at last, a weight lifted from my shoulders. The relief came with a flare of panic—had I handed my one and only lead to the realms beyond death to a charlatan? Deinaros turned the pages, his brows furrowed in concentration and a pleased smile playing upon his lips. I had already faded from his awareness.
If nothing else, Deinaros knew this book. On the word of his young attendant, he had expected it, like an old friend returned at last from a journey of decades. He greeted each horrifying diagram with a nod, each twisting line of text with a tap of one long finger.
“Well done,” he said, more to the book than to me. “This copy is nearly complete. The only things missing are the long, rambling musings of my former master. Everything useful is here.”
“Your master wrote it?” I asked. “He must have traveled nearly as far as I. I retrieved this book many months ago, from an island in the southern sea.”
Deinaros glanced up for the briefest moment before his eyes returned to the page. “No, he only penned the original, centuries ago. He never left the city of his birth. His followers, myself among them, made copies, and those who found those copies made more still.”
My heart sank. How many ambitious rulers became like the king of Salmacha, their souls clinging to their bodies even as their flesh rotted and fell from their bones? A second, selfish question followed the first: how many ill-starred lovers, grieving parents, and lonely widows had taken the book and attempted the same task I had undertaken? Had the gods already taken up arms against a sea of sorrowful humanity, chasing away any chance I had of breaching their ordained defenses?
“Very few now,” Deinaros said. “It was purged from the kingdoms of the West. So many were burned that the pyres reached the heavens. I have not seen a word or line from this book in many years.”
That was a small relief. Though I could not argue that this book should not have been burned, I counted myself fortunate to have found one of its surviving copies. “I do not wish to defy death,” I said. “Nor do I wish to bind a soul to my will, trapping it in an object, or to sacrifice the blood of innocents to extend a life. I want nothing but what the gods grant to each of us.”
“And what might that be, outlander?” asked Deinaros, lifting his head from the book once more.
“One life, returned to him from whom it was stolen, and with which to do as he chooses,” I said.
A thin smile split Deinaros’ face. “That sounds rather like defying death, but I am not here to judge you.”
“Judge if you wish, as long as you’ll help me,” I said. “Khalim did not die. A god took his body and sent his soul to the place beyond death. I wish to defy this god, and bring Khalim back to the world—no more and no less.”
Deinaros closed the book and stood, drawing himself up to his full height. He was a slight, slender man, not as tall as I, his velvet robe hanging from his shoulders like a tent from a frame. The cloth shimmered in shades of blue and violet. If nothing else, this all-knowing sage was a wealthy man. He was otherwise perfectly ordinary, by all appearances. His presence brought no unnatural shadows to the room, and his footsteps were quiet upon soft-soled shoes. The candles wavered with his movement, and his shadow did the same. “We will have plenty of time between us to argue over the specifics,” he said. “For now, I will study the book and regain the memories I have lost in the long years since I last laid eyes on it. You may rest here. The girl will see to your needs.”
With the book under his arm, he swept up the stairs, his robes whispering against the stone. A door opened on quiet hinges and closed again.
I looked at the girl. She had shed her straw sandals, and she stood barefoot on the stone, shifting her weight between her feet. Her expression was one of barely-concealed resentment.
“Come with me, I suppose,” she said with a sigh, making for the stairs.
“Your hospitality is appreciated,” I said, offering her a smile. “What’s your name, little one?”
“Cricket,” she answered.
I thought that I had misheard her, or that my grasp of the language had failed me. “Cricket?” I repeated.
She nodded. “The guest rooms are on the floor above. You’re not permitted to climb any higher without an invitation from Deinaros. If you try, I can’t help you. You’re on your own.”
“Does your master keep a great beast chained on the fourth floor?” I asked. “Or has he woven magics that will sap my strength and steal my blood for his rituals?”
Her answer to that was an imperious look of utter disdain. “Find out for yourself, if you’re so curious.”
“I can do as I’m told,” I said with a bow.
Cricket led me to the next floor. Eight arched doorways stood watch around the room, each carved into the stone and set with a heavy, oaken door. By some logic unknown to me, she chose one on our right-hand side and opened it. A narrow bed draped in a woven blanket and a thick, gray fur. Another fur lay on the ground, halfway under the sturdy wooden frame of the bed. Sunlight streamed in from the window, in which an old candle dripped wax across the sill and down the wall. It was comfortable enough; I had stayed in similar accommodations in Phyreios and in the temple of the dragon. It was better than my tent. From here, I could hear the ocean far below the tower. Even now, the idea of my own room enclosed in four walls was a novelty. I spent my youth sleeping six to a room, side by side in another lord’s hall, or pressed in between rowing benches on a longship. This small room was as luxurious as it was lonely.
It was just as well that I would not need to treat with any other guests of the tower. But for the brief interlude on Captain Hamilcar’s ship, I had been alone for some time. Bran had been my only companion, and while a true and loyal friend, he had little to offer in the way of conversation.
“I should see to my horse,” I said.
Cricket shrugged, ignoring me with all the panache a young girl can muster. I’d seen it enough times from my own sister, long ago.
When I reached the bottom of the tower and its great doors, I was surprised to see her leave the tower only a few steps behind me.
“Surely you have more pressing matters to attend to,” I said without malice.
“Master Deinaros wants me to dust the library again, as soon as I’ve seen to you,” Cricket said. “And I hate dusting the library. The books are so old, their spines are weak, and things try to escape.”
She held out one arm, rotating it to show a long, thin scar reaching from her wrist halfway to her elbow.
“I see,” was all I could say. I’d never heard of anything with teeth and claws emerging from a book, though I would admit that I had little experience with books. My companion Garvesh kept several in the small house in Phyreios, but none of them disgorged monsters before the hearth. The book I had carried, ominous though it was, had never attacked me in the night.
Perhaps Cricket was testing my credulousness, and her scar was nothing but the relic of an encounter with an ornery barn cat or a tumble out of a tree.
“My master collects books,” Cricket continued. “I’m not permitted to read them. I can, though, and write, too.”
Bran stood where I had left him, eating the grass at the base of the tower. He sniffed at my clothing as I approached, looking for something more substantial to eat.
“You’re rather accomplished for your age,” I said to Cricket. “But you’re young to have taken on such an apprenticeship. Deinaros demands much of you.”
She spread her arms in a languid shrug. “He bought me from the flesh-market in Nyssodes. It’s a lot of work, but I’m learning magic. Someday I’ll have a tower of my own.”
“And your own collection of forbidden books, I suppose,” I said.
Cricket nodded emphatically. “Yes. But not the ones that bite.”
“Your master speaks as though he has been alive for centuries,” I went on. “You’re not hoping to inherit this tower, are you?”
Her small nose wrinkled, and she gave the tower a dubious look. “No, it’s much too tall. It takes hours and hours to sweep all the steps. I’ll have a tower on the western coast, where you can watch the whales swim by in the spring.”
I had no desire for a tower, but this sounded like the perfect location for one to be built. “I wish you luck in your training, then,” I said.
The tower had no stable for Bran, so I took him a short distance into town and found an inn where he could shelter. I promised I would return shortly, but Bran paid me no heed, as the stable boy had several red apples to catch his attention.
By the time I reached Deinaros’ tower again, the sun had almost set, and Cricket was nowhere to be found. I climbed the stairs to my room. In the fading light, the strangeness of the space came into focus. From the outside, the tower’s third floor was exactly the same size as all the others, and the outer walls were straight and sheer; from within, it was obvious that this floor had to be larger than the others, for its interior wall with all its doors stood at the same distance from the stairs as the walls on the first two floors, with no space available for the rooms beyond. Either the tower played tricks on me, or the floors below had secret rooms behind their walls.
I thought to ask Cricket, when next she appeared, but I decided against it. It was none of my concern how many rooms this tower might be hiding, or what sort of books bit at their caretakers, or what lay above the room where I was to sleep. I had only to wait, and to care for Bran, and complete whatever task Deinaros had to give me. Deinaros was no necromancer, enslaving the souls of the living or the dead, as far as I could tell, and that was good enough for me. Though perhaps a little overworked, given the size of the tower, Cricket appeared to be hale and well. Surely this place was better than the flesh-markets, a term that conjured images of humans and animals strung from butcher’s hooks.
I had crossed half the world, I reassured myself as I went to sleep. All that was left was to wait.
Back to Chapter XLII: The Sorcerer’s Tower
Forward to Chapter XLIV: Beside the Water
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