hand. He finished the Knight in the space of a breath and turned toward Annalisse, arm cocked to throw the axe.
“No!”Jai cried.
For one furious instant, Stanach didn’t understand.
Jai put a hand on his arm, holding his throw. “She’s betrayed the resistance, Stanach. We have to know if there are others.”
His words hung between the dwarf and the Lady Librarian, the question unanswered.
“Lady,” he said, and he hadn’t meant to speak gently, yet he did. “Why?”
She closed her eyes, as one in pain. “I did it for the library.”
“The library? I don’t understand.”
Eyes shut, she drew a tight, pained breath. “I went to Medan and made a bargain. I told him I had something he wanted, if only he would promise to preserve the library. Through all that’s to come, he must keep it safe.”
On the evening of his last night in Qualinost, she’d done that. For a fleeting moment, Jai saw in her icy expression what he’d seen then-that longing look, that sense of loss’s shadow as she looked around at her precious hoard of manuscripts and books, songs and fables and legends, all the golden history of the Qualinesti. She’d bargained her soul for the Library of Qualinost, and into the bargain thrown elven and dwarven lives.
“You knew before I did that our family was leaving Qualinost.”
“Yes. I didn’t know where you were going, but you told me that.”
She’d set a Knight to linger around Mianost. When the refugees didn’t arrive, the Knight had no way to follow farther. Annalisse, however, didn’t give up so easily. She had more patience than Knights. She had, she believed, much more at stake.
Tonight there were, she said, with the first dawning of shame in her voice, four Qualinesti warriors dead in the forest, not far from the entrance to the tunnel. “But we took a vow, Jai, you and I. There will always be a library. There will always be history’s hoard in Qualinost.”
“We did, lady,” he said, the words like dust in his mouth. “But we took it to serve a truth, not a building.” Softly, he gave her back her own words, often spoken in the quiet precincts of her library. “We can’t forget who we were. It’s how we know who we are, and how we can guess who we will be. My lady, with your bargain, you risked making us cowards before all who would look back at us. You risked ending our history in shame.
“It isn’t the collection that matters. It is the history that matters.”
He turned his back on her. He didn’t look when Stanach asked if he should kill the traitor.
“No,” he said. “Your folk and mine are going to want to deal with her.”
The dwarf grunted and said he could save them all the time and trouble now, but he didn’t insist. He ordered Annalisse down the stairs. When she passed Jai, she paused. “It’s over Jai, or it soon will be. We can only try to live.”
Jai said nothing, but didn’t look at her.
Stanach gestured with his axe. Annalisse walked past, the hem of her sleeve brushing against Jai’s hand. It felt like ice, like winter coming
Dwarves dragged away the corpses of the Knights, eight strong fellows come back with Stanach from the work detail. Sitting on the bottom step of his way home, Jai heard them talking and the scrape of mail on stone as the heavy bodies were hauled away. No one came to wash away the blood.
“Stone will remember that forever,” Stanach said.
Jai nodded. He had nothing to say-or nothing that would pass the grief thickening his throat. Annalisse, his mentor… she’d given up. In fear or despair she’d chosen betrayal and found a way to convince herself it was an option.
Stanach, a grub-light in hand, took a seat on the step above. After a long moment of silence, he said, “They’re closing this entrance tonight. There’s a party of you Qualinesti above getting ready, and we’ll close it down here too. By morning no one will know it was here.”
Jai nodded.
“Are you sure you want to go? What about your mam and your da? Will y’not want to see ‘em one time?”
Jai shook his head. “Send them word. Just tell them… tell them I have to do this.”
Stanach’s voice softened, a little. “Jai.”
Jai turned, startled to hear the dwarf speak his name. He’d been “elf all along, just that- someone to move through the tunnels and then forget.
“Jai, it won’t be long before it all falls apart up there. The end is told. You heard it tonight People are giving up.”
Breeze smelling like rain slipped down the stairs. A woman’s voice called softly, urging Jai to come up now, or stay. Qualinesti! Secret soldiers of a king who danced, it seemed, to a tune of his own calling, one his people didn’t truly understand. It wasn’t over yet, not while these strove.
Jai rose, balancing with a hand on the dwarfs shoulder. “Walk up with me, will you?”
Wordless, they went. It was a long way up, a hard road, all those dozen winding stairs. At the top, Jai turned. A pit of blackness yawned below. Stanach stood in a pool of yellow lantern light on the top step. His face was like stone, no muscle moving.
“Stanach, the story isn’t all told yet, because I haven’t told it. I’m going back to do that. I’ll send the histories and stories out of Qualinost a little at a time. I’ll find a way to get them through to Thorbardin, and… and all the rest of the tale. How it ends.”
Stanach looked down into the darkness and then back. “Just get them out. Put them in any hand coming into the tunnel. I’ll see them the rest of the way home. And when the last one… Well, don’t stay too long, eh? Come bring the last one to me yourself.”
“Stanach, I don’t know if…”
A small muscle twitched in Stanach’s cheek. He took a breath; it sounded ragged. “That’s right. You don’t know. But you do know this: I’ll be here, right here in the tunnel, trawling for lostlings.” He offered his hand, his left, and Jai took it in his own left, grasping it the way Qualinesti warriors did, the hard comrade’s clasp. “I’ll wait.”
Jai nodded. He said no more about his chance of coming back. He turned, and he left, going out into the night and the end.
The Lost Sea
Effram saw the first splatters of rain hit the window only because the neighborhood children were throwing rocks at his windows again. And they were doing it standing inside his boat.
Glass tinkled, soft as wind chimes, onto the floor in one of the second floor rooms he rarely used. Little feet thudded on the deck in imitation of a sailor’s jog as the children laughed and cheered, celebrating the particularly well aimed throw. The four children, their faces dirty and their hair wild and uncombed, were all from one family. The littlest one was being newly initiated in the fine art of harassing crazy Captain Effram.
He stormed onto the back porch, reaching for the sling he kept hanging on a post for just such visits. The stones he kept beside it weren’t big or heavy enough to really hurt. They were just enough to give the little brats a smart pop for trespassing again. Just enough to leave a sting in exchange for the hurled insults that still had a sting of their own, even after twenty years.
Effram stepped into the yard and drew back on the sling. The children gave him ample opportunity for a very good shot, but just as he was about to fire, a big raindrop plopped right into the middle of his forehead. He missed his shot. With a loud thunk, the stone bounced carelessly off the hull of the boat, and the children cackled with glee.
With high pitched shouts of “Ahoy, mate!”
“Where you gonna sail today, Captain-on the Sand Sea?” the children ran away, leaping directly from the deck
