Songs of the Dying Earth

The Ultimate Library had been carved into the very rock of Mount Moriat, but rose from the summit in a series of thick but gleaming towers, gables, bulges, cupolas, and turrets. The keep was blind — that is, the many windows were mere slits, none broader than Derwe Coreme’s slender (but powerful) hand. The layers of protection spells caused the entire structure to gleam milkily and Shrue thought that countless castles lost to memory must have looked like that in the full moonlight in aeons long past. Then Shrue’s incipient melancholy grew deeper at the realization that no one else alive he knew would think of anything on the Dying Earth in moonlight; the Earth’s moon had wandered away into deep space millions of years ago, beyond even the reach of most legend. Most of the night sky above them now was dark save for a few dim stars marking the merest hint of where a progression of proud constellations had once burned.

Shrue tried to shake away the debilitating melancholy and concentrate on the task ahead, but — as he was also too prone to do — he wondered, not for the first or ten-thousandth time, what his real motive was in entering the Ultimate Library and reading Ulfänt Banderz’s books. Knowledge said part of his mind. Power whispered a more honest part. Curiosity argued an equally honest part. Control of the Dying Earth said the deepest and least-dissimulating core of the diabolist’s weary and melancholy brain.

“Are you going to land this rag?” asked Derwe Coreme over his shoulder. “Or are we just going to circle a thousand feet above the Dirindian until the sun comes up?”

Shrue brought the carpet down to a three-foot hover and dejinkered it as they stepped off. KirdriK was waiting just outside the phase fields as ordered. Either he had shed his monk’s robes or the beasties on his way up had clawed and chewed them off in their dying seconds.

“Great Krem,” whispered the war maven Myrmazon leader, hand going reflexively to her sword. “You choose ugly servants, Shrue.”

“You should see Old Blind Bommp,” said KirdriK through his rasp and gargle and growl.

“Silence,” commanded Shrue. “I have to study Ulfänt Banderz’s layers of defensive fields.”

Within a moment, he knew that the vile Faucelme had been essentially correct: there were a dozen layers to the Library’s defenses, eight of them active spells, four of them — counting the ghost — physical. As he probed and countered, Shrue felt something like disappointment fill him. Ulfänt Banderz had been one of the arch-maguses of all magi still living on the Dying Earth, but these defenses — while deadly enough to the average magician or would-be barbarian vandal — were easy enough to foil and countermand. Shrue had to spend less than five minutes on the first eight, and as for the spellbound circling (and starving) wolves, stone-ghouls, and vampire necrophages, KirdriK put them out of their misery within seconds.

They stepped across the massive old drawbridge — the Library’s moat was more decorative than serviceable, although Shrue saw croc-men swimming in the black water — and were confronted by the equally massive door sporting a surprisingly heavy lock.

“Are you going to blast that off?” asked Derwe Coreme. “Or would you prefer me to use my blade?”

“Neither you nor your blade would survive, I fear,” Shrue said softly. “Civilized people use a key.” He pulled one from his robes, fit it, clicked it, and opened the heavy door. Answering the Myrmazon’s quick, sharply questioning gaze, Shrue added, “I was a guest here long ago and took the liberty of studying the lock then.”

The inside of the Ultimate Library was dark and silent, the air dead, as in a room or crypt that had been closed up for centuries rather than weeks. Wary of boobytraps, Shrue had KirdriK emit a soft but bright glow from his chest that illuminated everything for twenty paces in front of the three of them. Shrue also allowed the daihak to lead the way, although always while under the diabolist’s guidance. They moved from room to room, then from floor to floor, up stairways rimned with dust. Here and there on the floor lay what they first took to be stone statues — short, nonhuman shapes — until finally Shrue said, “These are Ulfänt Banderz’s servants or apprentices. It seems they also turned to stone when he died.”

On each level of the darkened library, there were racks and shelves and stacks of books, most of the volumes a third to half as tall as Shrue himself. When they had progressed far enough that Shrue was moderately certain that there would be no goblin attack or sudden, deadly efulsion of dark forces, he lifted a dusty volume off its shelf and set it down heavily on an ancient, high, and slanted wooden reading table.

“I’m interested to read whatever this is,” whispered Derwe Coreme. It was hard to speak at normal volume in the echoing spaces.