CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“If everyone feels up to the hike over to the Library,” Grunwold said as he steered Slicewind high over the broken terrain bordering the ruins of the Library of the Sapphire Wind, “I’d like to bring Slicewind down in that meadow near the lake so we can flush the cisterns and take on fresh water.”
Heads nodded agreement all around, and Peg said, “Somehow, hiking over seems more polite. I know that we were told we could berth closer to the Library, but that was when we were already in the area. This time Sapphire Wind won’t know to expect us.”
Ohent emitted a shrill laugh. She’d become increasingly edgy the closer they drew to the Library, mostly remaining in the bow cabin, muttering loudly enough that the sound, if not the words, could be heard in the galley and lounge.
“I’d be happier if we walked over,” Ohent confessed. “I’ve been having terrible nightmares. Whether it’s my conscience or something else, I can’t say, but I’m in no rush.”
“Then that’s settled,” Vereez said from where she was leaning over the side rail, looking at the terrain below. “We should touch down in about an hour, with plenty of daylight left.”
The meadow grass had mostly rebounded from their prior visits, but when Teg debarked she noted that Grunwold had hit their prior marks close enough that the difference was barely discernable. Once they were all ashore and Slicewind had been secured, Grunwold continued in command mode.
“I’ll take point, as before, with Xerak right after me. Teg next, then Meg, then Ohent. Kaj, I think it would be best if you were right behind your mother.”
Kaj signaled his agreement with a single short nod. During the couple of day’s journey from the necropolis, sparring practice had been resumed. Kaj had admitted that he didn’t know how to use a sword, but he had proven a fair hand with both a light club, not unlike a police officer’s baton, and a staff. Although no one really expected trouble, today Kaj carried both.
“Peg, you after Kaj. Vereez will serve as rear guard.”
No one protested, so they set off. After their several treks between the meadow and the Library, the trail had come to seem familiar, even welcoming, but today Teg felt uneasy. The green tangle seemed too still, devoid even of the chatter and buzz of those avians and insects that knew they were too small to be endangered by the large bipeds. She noticed that Heru, who usually took off to forage and scout, was perched on top of Grunwold’s pack, his head drawn down between his wings, long beak darting back and forth as he peered suspiciously from side to side.
She wasn’t the only one feeling uneasy. Whenever they came upon anything unfamiliar on the little used trail, Grunwold would probe it with the tip of his spear. Most of the time the bits of greenery concealed nothing, but once a sort of land squid, roughly the size of a cottontail rabbit, darted out from the leafy cover, squiggled away through the duff, and vanished into the underbrush.
“Tetzet!” Xerak stared after it in open fascination. “I thought those were extinct!”
“Maybe they were,” Vereez said. “Who knows what got loose when the Library was destroyed? The repository might have had just about anything in it.”
Vereez had hardly finished speaking when there was a sound like thunder, distant to the ear, yet paradoxically close enough that Teg was sure she felt the vibration. She darted glances left and right, noting that the leaves were trembling, too.
That wasn’t my imagination.
At the sound, Grunwold started backing up, his arms spread wide as if to physically push the rest of the group back. Heru flew up, squawking protest. Footsteps quickened as everyone obeyed Grunwold’s wordless command. Teg walked slowly backward, alert for the source of the strange disturbance. As Xerak threw his head back and sniffed the air, the point of his spear staff began to glow a deep amber.
Kaj coughed. “What is . . . making that reek?”
Teg sniffed experimentally, getting the usual vegetative scents, augmented with that of freshly turned soil, accented with something like newly dropped cow manure mixed with rotting fish.
Freshly turned soil . . .
She shouted, “Something’s coming up from underground!” as the ground began shaking beneath their feet.
The little land squid had been sort of cute. What erupted from the trail in front of them was anything but. The creature looked something like a long-trunked sea anemone, except that, instead of delicate fronds, it possessed a wealth of very solid tentacles. Still rising, the monster was already taller by half again than Grunwold, the tallest of their company, even without his antlers.
While the little land squid had moved horizontally, utilizing its tentacles to propel itself along, this creature was employing some of its tentacles to thrust itself up from below. As it rose, it braced tentacles on the surface, stabilizing a very sturdy central column. When the creature shook itself violently to toss off the loam, it revealed a main torso shaded a brownish grey, in contrast to the tentacles, which were in myriad shades of green ranging from spring pale to evergreen dark. If the tetzet had eyes, Teg couldn’t locate them, but she was willing to bet its mouth was somewhere at the top of its trunk.
“Hoo-boy,” gasped Peg, “the love child of Cthulhu and an Ent. Run away?”
This last was said in imitation of the Monty Python knights, but Teg felt certain Peg’s proposal was no less genuine for all of that.
Grunwold had switched his grip on his spear, raising it to shoulder height. He was pulling back his arm, readying to throw, when Xerak leapt up and dragged the spear off target.
“You can’t kill it! That might be the last tetzet in existence!”
“We saw a little one,” Grunwold countered irritably.
“That only might be a younger version,” Xerak protested. “It might be a completely different variety. Who knows what young tetzet actually look like or how long they take to mature? We don’t know all that much about tetzet, other than that none have been seen alive for at least five hundred years. There’s even speculation that they might have been intelligent enough to be trainable. There are relief carvings at the ancient palace of Amyn that have been interpreted as showing tetzet being used to move timber and other bulky freight.”
“I can certainly believe that thing can move bulk,” Grunwold replied dryly, his gaze fixed where the tetzet continued to block the trail. “So what do you suggest? That we make our way through the trees, and put ourselves at the mercy of the spike wolves, piranha toads, and whatever else is out there?”
“I vote . . . ” Peg started to reply, but what Peg would have voted for or against was lost when the tetzet whipped out a long tentacle, caught Xerak around the midsection, and dragged him rapidly toward it. Caught off guard, Xerak lost his hold on his staff. Teg, next in line, caught the staff before it hit the dirt, but she was hardly aware of doing so, her attention fixed on Xerak and the tetzet.
Xerak’s arms were free, and he was trying to pry the tentacle from around him, but he wasn’t having much luck, possibly because, as Teg noted with horrified fascination, the young wizard was clearly trying not to hurt his captor. The claws that she’d seen pop many a cork out of many a bottle were not digging into the tentacles, nor was the lion-head wizard using his formidable fangs to bite.
Showing no gratitude for Xerak’s restraint, the tetzet lifted Xerak off the ground, then snaked out another tentacle to bind his legs and tail. The ground around the tetzet rippled slightly, suggesting that there were other tentacles beneath the loose soil, ready to grab anyone who came close.
“We can’t rush it,” Grunwold half muttered, “and among us we have two spears, three if we count Xerak’s staff.”
Teg glanced at Xerak’s staff, and noted that the amber light in the head was still present, although fading slightly.
“Xerak, can you . . . ” she was beginning when the tetzet flashed out another tentacle.
This one passed through the space between herself and Grunwold, darted to avoid Meg, then circled around Ohent’s upper body, pinning her arms to her sides. The tetzet started reeling Ohent closer, but this time met with far more resistance.
Howling in outrage, Kaj leapt forward, grabbing hold of the tentacle at a point in front of where it wrapped around his mother, then digging in his heels. He lacked Xerak’s claws, but muscles developed by lots of hard labor proved equal to this weird tug of war.
“Get my mother loose,” he snarled, snapping his jaws at a tentacle that made an exploratory dart toward him.
Ohent wasn’t helping matters, unless laughing in increasing hysteria could be said to be some sort of discouragement to her captor. Oddly, it was Xerak who seconded Kaj’s command.
“Get Ohent free. The tetzet’s after the pieces of Ba Djed. I can feel it trying to get the Spindle, but its hold on me is defeating its purpose.”
Teg could see what he meant. The tetzet had Xerak’s body, from the underarms down, so tightly wrapped that the enshrouding container with its arcane contents was buried behind its own coils.
I just hope it doesn’t decide to squeeze Xerak to a pulp or to rip him into convenient bite-sized morsels.
Peg and Vereez were trying to uncoil Ohent from the tetzet’s tentacle. Grunwold took a trial poke at the tentacle that held Ohent, but stopped when she screamed:
“It’s squishing me!”
Meg came up next to Teg, motioning to Xerak’s spear staff. “This creature seems beyond what the sun spider amulet can handle. Could you possibly use Xerak’s magic?”
In answer, Teg completed the question she’d been about to ask when the tetzet had grabbed hold of Ohent.
“Xerak, can you use your spear staff if I help you? There’s still a lot of glow in the spearhead.”
Despite his precarious position, Xerak frowned and shook his head. “I don’t want to kill it.”
“So don’t kill it,” Grunwold snapped at him, “but don’t let it kill you! There’s only one idiot like you, and in my books that makes you an endangered species, too. I’m not going to let you go extinct.”
Xerak laughed, and Teg realized that the young wizard had been keeping himself calm by focusing on something less personal than his immediate danger.
Then, too, beneath his superficial arrogance, Xerak has a tendency to undervalue himself, to see himself only as his beloved master’s faithful student, a student who has continually failed in his search.
Behind the byplay between Xerak and Grunwold, Teg was aware that the others were making progress freeing Ohent. Vereez was using her twin swords to discourage any tentacles that attempted to get an additional hold on Ohent, while Peg and Meg worked on untwining Ohent from the encircling coils. Kaj combined keeping the tentacle that held his mother from dragging her toward the tetzet’s trunk with a steady stream of soothing words.
“Take it easy, Mom. I’ve got this. I’m strong enough to keep this monster from getting you.” As he repeated the words over and over, like a charm, Ohent not only stopped shrieking, from the fragments Teg caught, actually started helping.
Teg became aware that Xerak was now addressing her.
“Teg, I’m too close to the tetzet for throwing fire at this thing to be a good idea, but maybe we can use my magic to distract it enough that Grunwold can help me get loose. I felt the tentacles loosen up a bit when the tetzet went after Ohent, again when Grunwold poked it, so here’s what I want you to do.”
His explanation became intricate and arcane, but Teg thought she got the basic point. Xerak finished up by saying, “Grunwold, I’ll need to stop pushing down the tentacles to concentrate with Teg, so don’t panic if it gets a few more loops around me.”
“I won’t,” the other grumbled, “but if it breaks your stupid neck, all bets are off. We can’t let it get that thrice-cursed Spindle, after all.”
“Fair enough. Ready, Teg?”
“Ready!”
Teg was more scared than she wanted to admit. Folklore, legend, and fantasy fiction were packed with cautionary tales about what happened to anyone who tried to use a wizard’s staff.
That’s without the wizard’s permission, she reminded herself, without his permission.
Without further pause, she eased the inner self she was just learning to recognize into the hum within the staff that she knew was Xerak’s own mana. It helped that he was her teacher, so she knew it well. For a fleeting moment, Teg thought she understood a little better why Xerak was so devoted to Uten Kekui. This sharing of mana was a little like singing in parts, a little like staying in step while performing a complicated dance. It was selfless and yet selfish, because as the blending took shape, Teg felt more acutely who she was, because she knew what in the combination wasn’t herself.
There wasn’t time to dwell on the sensation. Grunwold was shouting something. She couldn’t pull herself far enough out to manage to understand the words, but she knew that Xerak was probably in trouble.
There. I can feel the fire rising. There. Over just behind the tetzet, right at the edge of the trail. The tree that’s drying out. I bet the tetzet cut the tree’s roots when it buried itself in the trail. Now, ready, aim . . . Fire!
A bolt of white-hot fire jetted from the spear point along the trajectory Teg had chosen. It missed the tetzet, caught the dying tree, and set it ablaze. The smoke and smell of green wood burning filled the air. The tetzet, silent to this point, trumpeted panic from high among its fronds.
Teg’s vision blurred, and she sank to her knees. Like an image seen through a rain-streaked windowpane, she saw Grunwold racing forward to grab Xerak, pulling him loose as the tetzet sank down into the hole in the trail. She leaned her head against Xerak’s staff, felt the faint hum of his approval, then toppled to one side in a dead faint.
When Teg came around, she thought that her head was resting in Xerak’s lap, that he was spooning water into her mouth. To her surprise, when she fluttered her eyes open, the person tending to her was Kaj.
Why does he somehow feel like Xerak? came a thought, vanished almost as soon as shaped.
Kaj’s voice, gruffer than usual, said, “You okay, Teg? Drink this, if you can.”
He lifted her, propping her up, put something to her lips. Whatever it was tasted atrocious, but her body wanted it, even as her throat tightened and she gagged, so she forced it down and began feeling better.
“Vereez and most of the others are putting out the fire,” Kaj said. “I got nursemaid duty for you and Xerak, because my mother wouldn’t let me leave her.”
“Ohent okay?”
“She’s going to have some interesting bruises, but yeah, she’s okay.”
“Kaj saved me,” Ohent said proudly from where she leaned against a nearby tree. “He’s more extraordinary than anyone realizes.”
“And the Spindle and the Bird?” Teg asked.
“Both safe,” Kaj assured her.” “The tetzet seems to be gone, swum away underground or something like that.”
“It’s gone,” Xerak confirmed. Turning her head, Teg found he was leaning against a tree not far away, his spear staff back in his custody. “I wonder how the tetzet happened to be here. I was sure they were extinct.”
“We may never know,” said Meg, coming over, soot streaked but looking quite satisfied. “If I were to speculate, I’d say that the tetzet may have been one of the original guardians of Ba Djed, released when the Library was destroyed. I suspect—and this is only supposition—that the tetzet somehow caught the ‘scent’ of the Spindle when we traveled this way on our way back to Slicewind. For lack of anything else to do, it settled in to wait to see if the Spindle came through again. We shall need to ask Sapphire Wind if it can somehow discourage a repeat performance.”
“Amen to that,” Peg said cheerfully as she trotted over to join them. “But all’s well that ends well. Right? Teg, do you think you can manage to walk? So far no spike wolves or piranha toads or other of this area’s charming denizens have come calling, but . . . ”
“Give me a hand up,” Teg said. “Whatever Kaj fed me has done wonders.”
“It’s a stimulant,” Vereez called from where she was stomping out a few remaining sparks. “You’re going to feel like a divinity for about two hours. Then you’re going to sleep really, really well.”
“Then let’s get going,” Teg said, finding that Vereez was correct. If she’d had wings, she’d have joined Heru in the skies. “Otherwise, you folks are going to end up carrying me when I crash.”
They reached the doorways of the Library of the Sapphire Wind without further incident.
As the wide portal began to swing open, Teg found herself remembering the second verse of the rhyme supplied what seemed so long ago by Hettua Shrine:
All of this and more you will find
After you pass through the doorways
Of the Library of the Sapphire Wind
She laughed softly to herself.
“What’s so funny?” Peg asked, while Meg tilted her head in a wordless echo of the question.
Teg answered, “I was remembering the rhyme. We certainly found out a lot, but I don’t think any of what we learned was what our holdbacks expected. I wonder what we’ll learn next, and where it will take us?”
“Good question,” Meg said softly. “The only thing I feel certain about is that Over Where hasn’t finished surprising us yet.”