strange a sight on a white-eye as the rings he wore, diamonds and rubies flashing from his scarred left hand. Behind him walked General Gaur and Kohrad. The young white-eye looked less ostentatious than his father for once in a black brigandine. From the expression on Kohrad's face, he had more than baiting Litse on his mind as he stared with undisguised hostility at his father's escort. Amber could tell the slim, aloof Gesh was well-aware of the scrutiny but did not deign to take note.
'Amber, what is your strange friend's name?'
'My name is Nai, my Lord,' the necromancer said before Amber could reply, bowing briefly.
'I don't remember speaking to you,' Lord Styrax said. 'Remember your place or Major Amber will cut that lopsided grin off your face.'
Nai's smile faltered as he realised there wasn't a trace of humour in Styrax's words.
'Now, Amber: talk.'
Amber bowed to the correct depth. 'The servant of Isherin Purn, my Lord -1 mentioned him in my report, but clearly I was mistaken in my assumption he had died.' He hesitated and looked Styrax direct in the eye. 'My Lord, he has news you should hear.'
Styrax nodded. 'I understand.' He glanced back up at the entrance to the Fearen House, set behind a colonnade of eight enormous pillars standing sixty feet high. The main entrance was a brass-fronted door some thirty feet high, polished to a shine at the expense of whatever image had once been imprinted onto the metal. 'Come with me,' he ordered.
They ascended the steps and entered, Amber checking his pace to glance at the bas-reliefs of winged warriors on each side of the door before following Lord Styrax in. The Fearen House had high windows of stained glass on each of the six walls: two thin windows alongside the entrances to each wing and three enormous ones on the other walls. They filled the massive central space with tinted light, adding colour to a drab day. Above the windows were drapes of richly coloured cloth, gold-edged flags of bright red punctuating long swathes of flowing blue.
The Menin weren't the only visitors to the library. A few scholars were leaning over some of the half-dozen U-shaped desks below the dome, where lecterns on two sides were angled towards the scholar in the centre so he could study the enormous leather-bound books. Two men and a woman looked up at the sound of feet before averting their gaze quickly, at which Amber allowed himself a small smile.
The prohibition on weapons doesn't seem as effective in the presence of a man double the weight and a foot taller than a normal man.
Lord Styrax ignored the looks and continued on into the very centre of the room. Amber looked around at the huge room; he'd not before been in a temple as large as this and it was undoubtedly as magnificent as any room he'd ever seen, even if the dome above did lack the gold ornamentation he'd expect in a Temple of Death. There was the dry scent of book dust on the air, and solid blocks of bookcases protruded out into the room on all sides. Arcane symbols were carved into every available wooden surface of the bookcases and armed guards were posted at every door.
Lord Styrax had stopped in the very centre of the room. Amber caught him up and stood at his side.
'Do you know what that is?' Lord Styrax said in a soft voice. The Fearen House was as quiet as a temple at prayer, its few devotees bent silently over their icons of worship.
Amber looked at the object: a five-sided column of black granite, two feet high and one foot square, with the corners smoothed down and the whole thing polished to an almost mirror shine. In the centre of its flat top was a half-sphere which, for no reason Amber could tell, appeared to be solid gold. A tiny script was etched both into stone and gold, so small Amber had to bend down before he realised it was not a language he could read. It took him a while to work out what the language was: single or grouped geometric runes cut at one depth, overlaid with a shallower, more flowing style, like scroll-work on a picture frame – Elvish, the first mortal language, made up of a hundred and twenty-one angular core runes and five hundred and five lesser, to which the flowing script added detail, case and tense.
'It's called the Heart of the Library,' Lord Styrax said, anticipating the soldier's response.
Amber straightened again. 'Does it do anything? That's Elvish, isn't it?'
'Not as far as I can tell, and of course no magic works here.'
'Why write in Elvish then?' He frowned. 'I thought folk only used the language for magic, that it was the best representation for channelling energy? You don't write secrets in it and leave them in a bloody library where there are the resources, and scholars, to translate it.'
'The script is apparently a poem, one that is so obscure it most likely contains a code. They call it the puzzle of the heart.'
Amber looked up at his lord. Without warning the hairs on his neck prickled, as they did when he suspected he was not in control of a situation.
What sort of a conqueror gets distracted in a library, however magnificent? Karkarn's horn, is conquest not your goal?
'Have you broken the code?' Amber asked in a hoarse whisper.
Lord Styrax smiled in a way he had never seen before: in genuine pleasure. The huge white-eye rarely showed his true emotions and Amber gave a cough of surprise as Styrax replied, 'I will start today; none of my investigations have managed to procure a transcription. All I have heard is that the code is fiendishly difficult and reveals a surprising truth – the few individuals who have managed to decode it all refused to reveal the answer and destroyed their working.'
'And you've come to test yourself against it?' Amber asked. Duke Vrill had said once that had Lord Styrax not been born a white-eye or a mage, he would have become a renowned scholar all the same.
Styrax inclined his head. 'How could I resist such a challenge? Since I could not find a transcription, I spent my time researching the object itself. I suspect the code's creator never expected a more practical approach to the mystery.'
Amber looked puzzled. Clearly Lord Styrax had a point, but he had no idea what it was. If he wanted Amber to work something out he'd need another scrap of information.
'I've been looking at their records,' Styrax continued after a moment. 'There is an allusion to the heart of your unknown soldier being encased within, but no explanation as to why he would donate his heart for this purpose. What's more, according to the ancient records, Deverk Grast spent a few days here after he sacked Ismess, during what he termed the grand finale of the scouring. One night he walked out of those doors, called off the slaughter and began to draw up his plans for the Long March instead; the turning point in our tribe's history. All very strange, wouldn't you say?'
Amber gave a helpless shrug. 'Ah, yes, sir, I suppose so.'
Every Menin child learned about the Long March, the exodus of the Menin tribe to the Ring of Fire. Approximately half had died on the two-year journey across the Waste but there was only ever conjecture and propaganda given as Grast's reasoning.
Lord Styrax gave him a pat on the shoulder. 'Don't worry, you won't have to sit here and help me with the code; just stay long enough to tell me what could not wait.'
Amber glanced back. The winged white-eye, Gesh, was watching them impassively from beside one of the bookcases, his feathers brushing its shelves. He cleared his throat, trying to speak as quietly as possible in the echoing room.
'A few things of great importance. First of all; more people survived the fall of Scree than I had realised, Haipar the Shapeshifter for one. I was sure she'd died but now it appears she's a nursemaid in the employ of the duchess.'
Lord Styrax gave a sharp bark of laughter. The sound echoed around the room but by the time faces looked up in surprise his face was blank again. Amber felt his cheeks colour as though he'd been the one to laugh. Despite being noble-born, he had never felt at ease in genteel surroundings.
'Are they all this surprising?' Styrax asked.
Amber nodded. 'Secondly, Zhia Vukotic is in the city, or so Nai claims. Apparently she has some influence over the duchess's chief advisor and made sure he was aware of it.'
'Hardly a surprise; you said Haipar was one of her agents in Scree, no? It's far from surprising the vampire has more than one in place.'
'True, but I thought I should tell you she made the contact. The last thing is the strangest; I don't know
