Songs of the Dying Earth

Derwe Coreme removed her sword, reversed it — her dragonscaled gauntlet protecting her hand from the blade’s razor sharpness — and smashed the heavy hilt down on the priceless crystal case. It shattered into a thousand shards and the warrior maven sheathed her sword, lifted the cat’s-eye crystal egg out, and presented it to Shrue, who pondered it a moment and then set it somewhere within the folds of his robe.

“We must begin our odyssey at once!” cried Dame War Maven Derwe Coreme. “Activate your jinker or jinker your carpet or wake up your rug or whatever the hell you must do. Treasures and booty await!”

“I think that we should…” began Shrue but was interupted by KirdriK flicking back into existence next to them.

“We have company,” rumbled the daihak. “And one of them is a Red.”

The first pre-dawn light was lighting the crags and scragtrees around the summit and Library keep. Faucelme was there with his small army — eleven pelgranes, each larger than any Shrue had ever seen, each saddled as if to carry a man or demon — and then a tall, blond, handsome male human apprentice, also dressed in black, and the nine demons themselves. These last were the huge surprise to Shrue — not that the foul little magician would show up with demons in tow, that was a given, but that he could muster these terrible entities. Arrayed behind the apprentice and Faucelme (who was still dressed in black, the rings on his fingers glowing from more than reflected morning twilight) were nine Elementals — three Yellows (to be expected), three Greens (very impressive for any magus from the 21^st Aeon), two Purples (rather astounding and not a small bit terrifying), and a Red.

The presence of the Red, Shrue knew, changed everything. How has this little homunculus ever managed to summon and bind a Red — or survive the process? wondered the diabolist. Aloud he said, “Welcome, Faucelme. I came for our dawn meeting, as you requested.”

The thief-magus grimaced a smile. “Oh, yes…rug merchant? If the best you can do is that simpering daihak, then perhaps you truly are only a carpet peddler.”

Shrue shrugged. He could feel Derwe Coreme’s poised readiness next to him, but the Myrmazon leader had little chance even with a Yellow, none with a Green or Purple, and less than none with Faucelme and his apprentice, much less with a Red. KirdriK’s attention was focused — through and across twelve dimensions of perception — totally on the Red. Shrue could feel the daihak strain against a century’s worth of invisible bindings like a wolf on a leash. KirdriK’s sublimated snarls were not on any frequency that human ears could hear, but both the two Purples and the single terrible Red were showing row upon row of what would be called fangs on lesser entities as they heard KirdriK’s challenge.

“I’ve already had my insects peer in at the rock that used to be Ulfänt Banderz,” continued Faucelme. “Since I already have an adequate paperweight for the desk in my study, I have no use for the dead librarian. But I do want his…ho!..who is this rat that’s joined your ranks, diabolist?”

Meriwolt had been cowering behind Derwe Coreme but now poked his long snout and wide eyes around her armored hip. The diminutive Mauzman’s mouth hung open in awe or horror or terror or all three.

“Merely a possible new servant I am interviewing,” said Shrue. “You started to say that you wanted…to go down to the village with us to have breakfast? Or would you and your entourage rather enter the Library and pay your last respects to Ulfänt Banderz while we return to Dirind Hopz?” Still smiling, Shrue jinkered the little carpet to life and floated it close.

The Red twitched his six onyx-taloned hands, and Shrue’s rug — a family heirloom from a time when the sun burned yellow — exploded in heatless crimson flames. The ash scattered in a rising breeze as the red sun struggled to rise across the river in the east.

“Thus to any attempts to jinker skyward,” hissed Faucelme. “Your wares wagon and other carpets are already ash, Shrue. I want the Finding Crystal and I want it now. “

Shrue’s left eyebrow arched almost imperceptibly. “Finding Crystal?”

Faucelme laughed and held his hand out as if ready to release the Red. “Shrue, you’re a fool. You’ve just figured out that Ulfänt Banderz kept the volumes here unreadable by phase-shifting them in spacetime…but you still think there is a second library. There is only this one, the Ultimate Library, displaced in space and time. When I collapse that phase-shift, the magical lore of a million years will be mine. Now give me the Finding Crystal.”

Shrue reluctantly removed the crystal from his robe with both hands, but kept his long, gnarled fingers around it as it glowed in his palms. Beneath them, the granite of Mount Moriat shook as the sun struggled to rise, its bloated red face flickering and spotted.