Songs of the Dying Earth

“I don’t know, sire,” squeaked Meriwolt. He gestured to a low door. “Here is the Master’s bedchamber. And within is…well…the Master.”

“Have you been inside since your master died?” asked Shrue.

“No, sire. I was…afraid.”

“Then how do you know your master is dead within?” asked Shrue. The diabolist knew that Ulfant Banderoz 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 Ulfant Banderoz’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 Ulfant Banderoz 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 Ulfant Banderoz 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 Ulfant Banderoz’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…”

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 Ulfant Banderoz,” 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