Songs of the Dying Earth

“Then how do you know your master is dead within?” asked Shrue. The diabolist knew that Ulfänt Banderz was dead and turned to stone on the bed within because he had looked through the eyes of his spy sparling perched on the narrow slit of window above, but he was open to catching this Mauz Meriwolt in a lie if there was a lie.

“I peeked through the keyhole,” squeaked the little assistant.

Shrue nodded. To KirdriK he said, “Stand guard on the drawbridge outside.” To Derwe Coreme and the trembling Meriwolt he said, “Please go stand behind those thick columns. Thank you.”

Shrue touched the latch — the door to Ulfänt Banderz’s chamber was unlocked — and then he opened the door and stepped within.

In an instant, Phandaal’s Excellent Prismatic Spray sent a thousand shards of frozen colors, each as terrible as a bolt of barbed crystal, hurtling into the space that Shrue the diabolist occupied. Shrue’s modified Expansible Egg froze them in midair, and a gesture by the diabolist banished them.

An efulsion of green fog — instantly fatal to human or magician’s lungs — erupted from the ceiling and floorboards and from the stone corpse of Ulfänt Banderz himself. Shrue raised both palms, transformed the efulsion into a harmless, colorless fog, and then waved it away. He waited.

Nothing more erupted, exploded, slouched forth, or efulged.

“You may come in now,” Shrue said to the war maven and Mauzman.

The three stood next to the bed that held the stone corpse of the Master of the Ultimate Library and Final Compendium of Thaumaturgical Lore from the Grand Motholam and Earlier. The petrified remains of Ulfänt Banderz looked ancient but dignified as he lay there fully dressed with his eyes closed, feet together, hands calmly clasped over his lower belly.

“He seems to have known that death was coming,” whispered Derwe Coreme.

“The Master had been suffering bouts of ill health for several years before…before…this,” squeaked Meriwolt in his softest voice.

“Was your master frequently absent from the Library?” Shrue asked the assistant.

“For a week of every month for as long as I can remember, and I have been the Master’s faithful assistant for many centuries,” piped the Mauzman.

“As I thought,” mused Shrue. “There is a second Library.”

“What?” cried the Myrmazon chief.

Shrue opened his hands. “Actually it is the same Library, my dear, but phase-displaced in space — by many hundreds or thousands of miles and leagues, no doubt — and in time by at least a few fractions of a second. This is why the books cannot be read here.”

“But they can be read in the other Library?” asked Derwe Coreme.

“No,” smiled Shrue, “but in the other Library there must be the means to bring the two libraries back in phase.” He turned to Meriwolt. “Did you have a twin by any chance?”

The pibald little figure was so startled that his three-fingered hands flew up and his odd ears went back. “Yes — a sister who died at birth — or rather, when we were devatted. The Master has told me many times that it was a shame that she did not live — he had named her Mindriwolt. How did you know, sire?”

“She did not die at birth,” said Shrue. “All these centuries, your twin has been an assistant at Ulfänt Banderz’s phase-shifted second Library.

This is how you sometimes ‘just know’ where to shelve the books your Master ordered you to shelve.”

“She did not…was not…turned to stone when the Master died?” asked Meriwolt in a trembling squeak.

Shrue absently shook his head. “I suspect not. We will know when we go there.”

“Where is this place?” asked Derwe Coreme, an aggressive explorer’s — or perhaps plunderer’s — smile on her face. “And what treasures may it hold?”

Shrue opened his hands and arms again, gesturing toward the Library beneath and around them. “The treasures of the secrets of ten thousand-thousand ages of power and science and magic,” he said softly. “The great Phandaal’s long-lost mysteries. Panguire’s Prime Commandments. The secrets of Clamhart and Tinkler and Xarfaggio and a hundred other magi of ancient days — men who make today’s magicians, myself included, look like children playing witlessly with colored blocks.”

“How do we find it?” asked the war maven.

Shrue crossed the modest room to a recessed closet shielded by a simple rood screen, checked for boobytraps, and rolled back the screen. Atop a single primitive dresser was a glass case, and, within the case, gleaming softly, was a perfectly smooth crystal the size and shape of a merg’s egg. Inside the gently pulsing crystal, what looked like the vertical slash of a crimson cat’s eye glowed.

“What is it?” breathed Meriwolt.

“A Finding Crystal,” said Shrue. “Enchanted to lead the bearer to something important…such as the second Library.” He tapped his thin lower lip while he studied the crystal case that contained the treasure. “Now to find a way to open this without…”