A spear nudged his back. A lamp flared. Hederick sat up, laughing, and Tarscenian saw himself surrounded by a half-dozen guards, plus Dahos. In a moment, he was disarmed and held securely.
Hederick chortled, rubbing his hands together. 'I have lived decades for this moment,' he crowed. 'You sought to steal Sauvay's gift, did you, Tarscenian? By the New Gods, I will use that selfsame gift to destroy you!'
The High Theocrat unwrapped the leather.
Then he cried out in shock. He and Tarscenian stared in dismay at the plain gray stone in Hederick's palm.
It was Tarscenian who first remembered the figure of a kender bent over Hederick's body in the western court shy;yard. And here he thought the kender had given the arti shy;fact back. He began to chuckle, then laugh out of control.
'I will kill you for this, sinner,' Hederick snapped. He rapped out orders. 'Dahos, we will reconsecrate the temple tomorrow morning. At the dawn service.' He con shy;tinued speaking over Dahos's protests that there wasn't enough time. 'The highlight of the ceremony will be the execution of a false Seeker priest.'
'By the gods, Tarscenian is doomed,' Olven whispered. 'All right, Marya. I am with you.'
The woman scribe sprang down from the stool and rushed to his side, but the dark apprentice held up one hand. 'I will do it, Marya. Not you.'
'Why take that upon yourself?' she demanded. 'It was my idea.'
'You may have expressed it first, but it was in my mind from the first atrocity I recorded. The man is evil.'
''But…' Marya's sentence trailed off unfinished. What did it matter who changed Hederick's history, she thought, as long as someone did?
Olven took a deep breath and picked up his quill again. At that moment, however, a rested, replenished Eban entered the Great Library and stepped smartly up to their shared desk. Marya frowned, but stifled a groan.
'1 thought you'd want a rest,' the young apprentice said to Olven. 'I'm anxious to get back to this history to see what hap shy;pens. Has Hederick been vanquished yet?'
Olven and Marya exchanged glances, their faces all the more tired-looking next to Eban's youthful enthusiasm. 'I have a bit more to write,' Olven said at last, 'and then you may take my place.'
'What happened?' Eban asked, finally taking in their glum expressions.
'Tarscenian's been captured,' Marya said curtly. 'Let Olven finish.'
Olven closed his eyes, as though he were going into a trance. Then he opened them, and only Marya could tell that the reverie was a fraud. Eban edged between the other two to see the words as they appeared beneath Olven's pen.
'Suddenly, Hederick clasped his hand to his chest, cried out, and collapsed,' Olven wrote. 'By the time his aides reached him, the High Theocrat was dead.'
'By the gods!' Eban whispered. 'Hederick has…?'
The three stared at Olven's words. Abruptly, tears glittered in Marya's eyes, and she reached past Eban to put a hand on Olven's suddenly shaking shoulder. 'Olven,' she said. 'I think we've made a…'
Olven cried out at that instant. The quill was scratching again on the parchment, but, judging from the writer's agonized face, not by his own volition. Quickly, the quill's tip went back shy;ward over the sentences. As it passed over them, the words dis shy;appeared. The parchment appeared as it had before Olven's false trance. The long white feather floated to the library floor, but none of the three paid it any attention.
Marya was the first to speak. 'Are you hurt, Olven?'
Tears were streaming down the apprentice's face, but he shook his head. Gently, Marya coaxed him to his feet and, half-sup shy;porting him, guided him out of the library. Eban stared, goggle-eyed. The red-haired apprentice hesitated before he moved into Olven's place and took up a new quill.
In his cell in the depths of the Great Library, Astinus nodded as he read the new passage on the page of his own history.
'And at that moment, two apprentice scribes in the Great Library at Palanthas attempted to alter the course of history. However, they soon learned-as had countless Great Library apprentices before them-that one can change history only by living it, not by wishing it.'
Chapter 23
One moment, Mynx and her centaur were speeding along over the forest floor with the rest of Phytos's force. The next moment, they had barged pell-mell into a sea of shouting humans, goblins, and hobgoblins.
'What is it?' the kender shouted from his own mount as the centaurs scrambled to assess what had happened.
Mynx recognized several figures. 'It's the slave train. They must have stopped for the night.'
'What are they doing north of Solace?' Kifflewit demanded, being suddenly of a decidedly practical turn of mind. 'There's nothing up this way! See, I have the maps to prove it…' He rummaged in his pockets.
'I don't know,' Mynx yelled back. 'Maybe they're heading for the Straits of Schallsea.' Or maybe the rumors of armies to the north were true, and the relocation of the slaves was tied in with the military movements, she thought. She would not be surprised if Hederick was cooperating with vermin armies whose rampages had sent all those refugees pouring into Solace.
She had no time to develop her thoughts, however. The centaurs had pitched into battle with the goblin and hob shy;goblin captors of the human slaves. And before she knew it, Mynx was fighting for her life from the centaur's back. She wielded that creature's short sword. The centaur, meanwhile, swung a club with deadly accuracy, dashing in the skulls of more than one goblin.
The hobgoblins were well armed with maces, spears, and long swords, and although the centaurs outnumbered them, the horse-creatures were limited to using clubs in close quarter fighting. It proved too crowded for bows and arrows.
The slaves, as before, huddled together and begged for mercy. Finally, one of them shook herself free of the crowd. Ceci Vakon was not dressed the part of a warrior. The mayor's widow still wore the frilly nightrobe she'd had on when Dahos and the temple guards had forced her and her family from their home. Her curly brown hair lay tangled on her shoulders, a yellow ribbon askew in the mass of hair. But there was no mistaking the purpose in her flashing eyes.
'People,' Ceci shouted, 'we lost one opportunity for freedom because of fear. Are we going to throw away another?'
The fifty humans only bunched closer together. No one replied until Ceci's own daughter spoke up. 'Mama, what if we get hurt?' the teen-ager asked softly.
'I'll fight!' cried Ceci's ten-year-old son, jumping up. 'Give me a sword!' Soon Ceci's other two sons were clamoring for weapons as well.
Then, as the battle raged around them, the other chil shy;dren in the pack called for weapons. The hobgoblins were too busy evading centaur clubs to notice the insurrection growing in their midst.
A man shamefacedly stepped forward. 'I can't have it said that my children'll fight for their freedom and I won't,' he said. Another man stepped up, too, and a young woman. They joined Ceci Vakon in exhorting Hed-erick's slaves. 'We're with the mayor's wife!'
'Who else is with me?' Ceci cried.
This time all the people roared to their feet, sweeping up whatever they could find in the way of weapons. From a five-year-old lad hurling rocks to a seventy-year-old woman wielding a knitting needle, they tore into their surprised captors.
The hobgoblins and goblins, used to passiveness from the slaves, were thrown utterly off balance. Ceci herself knocked the hobgoblin sergeant down, and Mynx fin shy;ished him with her borrowed sword.
Soon the centaurs and the slaves had slain every hob shy;goblin and goblin, at least two dozen of the
