for thousands of years made writing history even more difficult. Historians, those like his father that served as librarians and keepers of knowledge, fought over how things were to be labeled. Explorers, like Shang-Li, reveled in a world that still held secrets.
The third globe was even less defined. It held only patches of lands that had once been part of Toril and were no longer on that plane. Ravel Kouldar was evidently attempting to fill in some of the spaces with educated guesses based on what parts of Toril had slipped back across the barrier weakened by the Spellplague.
Shang-Li thought seriously of shoving all three globes into the magical bag he’d brought with him. The bag was nearly bottomless, capable of holding a great many things without increasing in size or weight. His father had given it to him the first time he’d left the Standing Tree Monastery. He’d also told him to fill it with worthwhile things.
Things go wrong when you try to do too much. His father’s cautionary words curbed Shang-Li’s zeal. Stay with the plan.
Reluctantly, Shang-Li turned from the globes.
With the magical crystal still held before him, Shang-Li walked to the wall on his left. He sidestepped a hanging skeleton, making sure to stay out of reach just in case, and stopped in front of the bookshelves. A ladder built into the shelving was attached from the floor to the topmost shelf to his right.
The time had come to find out how good the information his father and the monastery had gotten was. He knelt and gazed at the shelves.
In the time of Shang-Li’s grandfather, a historian had happened on information that the Standing Tree Monastery had lost in a battle nearly three hundred years ago. An invading army under General Kirat Han had laid siege to the monastery and sought the riches they knew the monks had hidden within.
But he’d taken more than mere treasure.
The Shou kept journals written by monks that had served the monasteries. Wisdom and history resided in those pages, and all of it was irreplaceable. General Han had taken six of the books of Liou Chang, also known as Liou the Perceptive. The books had contained all of the monk’s family history of the five other monks that had preceded him.
Most important of all, though, Liou had written about spells, which General Han had used to open gates around the Inner Sea. With that power at his command, the warlord had been almost unstoppable. The knowledge of those spells remained a threat as long as the book containing the information was at large.
General Han had executed Liou the Perceptive, then ordered the monastery burned to the ground and salt poured into the gardens. Ultimately, the survivors had rebuilt the monastery and exacted vengeance on General Han. The warlord soon fathered a traitorous son that gave information to the Standing Tree monks that allowed them to kill him.
Unfortunately, Liou’s books had been hidden, scattered throughout General Han’s doomed empire. The search for Liou’s books had become legendary. Shang-Li had remained on the lookout for them for all his life. But he had never seen even one of those the monastery had recovered.
Four of Liou the Perceptive’s books had been found and returned over the years. General Han had traded them to sages and clerics that desired the herbal magics contained in the pages. Those had been relatively harmless, but the monks hadn’t known that until they’d gotten possession of them and deciphered them. Liou had always written his original manuscripts in code, and he’d created a new code for each manuscript. Liou had been laborious in his efforts, and each code had taken years to decipher.
Two of the books had at last been traced to an ill-fated historian, a man called Bayel Droust. Ravel Kouldar didn’t have either of the two missing books, but he did have a journal of a ship’s officer that had gone down on the Grayling. After hundreds of years of searching, the monks of Standing Tree Monastery finally had a clue as to where the ship had gone down, and what had happened to it.
Ravel Kouldar had recently hired a scribe to help him organize some of his books. Once the job was finished, Kouldar had planned to kill the scribe. The young man had kept his wits about him and barely made away with his life a step ahead of an assassin. In time, because he was one of those the Standing Tree Monastery had taught and who had learned of Liou’s missing books, he’d reported his experience and the existence of the book mentioning Grayling to the monks only a short time ago. The monastery had worked quickly to take advantage of this bit of good fortune. Kwan Yung was given a ship and told to find Shang-Li, then travel to the Pirate Isles to verify the scribe’s report of the sailor’s journal.
Silently, Shang-Li stepped to the center of the room and faced the window squarely. He held up his right arm at his side, took note of where his shadow lay across the angle of the rectangle of moonlight streaming through the open window, and turned to face the bookshelves.
The tomes were expertly bound and expensive, and would have been worth quite a lot in certain circles, but none of them captured Shang-Li’s interest.
He reached under the shelf and felt along the back for the hidden trigger the scribe had told the monks of. At first Shang-Li thought the scribe had made a mistake. The man had been nervous, scared. Working for a wizard like Ravel Kouldar, he’d have been a fool not to be.
Even investigating carefully, Shang-Li found no hidden release as was promised. His anxiety mounted and he listened for noises within the tower but heard only the beating of his own heart.
Then, after a second search, then a third, Shang-Li’s callused fingertips discovered the barely discernable depression. It was there, only a small change in the wood.
He smiled and depressed the section of the shelving. The hidden door swung open and Shang-Li’s fighting sticks slid smoothly into his hands.
Shang-Li forced himself to breathe out. Forest Mother, he prayed, protect the fools that believe in you.
Tense, Shang-Li hunkered down and peered through the opening. It lay along the floor, barely large enough for him to slide through. He saw only the thick, impenetrable darkness on the other side.
With a fighting stick in his right hand, he propelled himself through the opening and gracefully rolled to his feet in the darkness on the other side. He bumped against something and flailed for it. Almost immediately, the sound of ceramic shattering filled the room and chunks of an object ricocheted from his feet and legs.
Shang-Li flattened himself against the wall he’d come through. After a while, when he heard no one in the outer room, he breathed a sigh of relief and chose to believe no one had heard the awful noise. He lifted the necklace and the crystal and spoke another word.
This time the blue crystal glowed like pale moonlight.
The illumination slowly pulsed outward and filled the room.
Shards of an elaborately painted vase lay scattered on the floor. Valuable, Shang-Li noted, scanning the swirling decorations. A piece from a druid clan in Dragon Reach that had attained some prominence. Kouldar wouldn’t be happy about that. Lifting the glowing necklace, Shang-Li swept his gaze around the room. Like the outer room, this one had floor-to-ceiling shelves lining the walls. Instead of books, though, other objects filled the shelves as well.
Multi-colored lights reflected from gemstones and precious metals and the locks of small chests. Weaponsswords and knives, and bows with quivers of arrowslay among them.
Goddess of the green, Shang-Li thought as he held the glowing crystal before him. The scribe’s story hadn’t prepared him for the treasure trove that lay around him.
After spending a moment orienting himself, he searched through the book collections. Histories, studies of plants and animals, journals written by wizards, treatises of learned men who sought to understand spellcraft, and books about other lands filled the shelves. His quick mind grasped that in short order, though the topics appeared disparate. Kouldar was obviously a collector of some magnitude.
Grayling’s lost log by her third mate was located with a clutch of books regarding other ships lost in the Sea of Fallen Stars. If Shang-Li hadn’t been knowledgeable of those lost ships, he might not have made the connection.
Although the book showed wear and tear, it had obviously been well made. Shang-Li had expected a common sailor’s log filled with rough, woody sheets, but the pages were pristine and white even after all these yearsnot a feat many could do and something that was paid dearly for. A few of the pages held stains from drink and food. Others had burn marks that scored the pages and had eaten holes in places. The pasteboards that held the pages together were thin wooden leaves bound in sturdy cloth. The author’s name was mostly worn away.
