Part 19 (1/2)
From there, the rest of the job was easy. A friend of Raf-bit's had told Teza the floor plan of the house, enabling her to slip through the night-darkened halls, past two more guards, to the second floor, where the library stood at the end of a long corridor. Teza's gla.s.ses saw nothing amiss. No watchdogs, no statues enspelled to shout an alarm, no traps, nothing. Lord Duronh must not consider his books very valuable, Teza told herself.
Her suspicions proved correct when she entered the library. It was a small room-cold, damp, and musty. Sheets covered the furniture, and the books were layered with dust.
Teza wasted no time. She knew the book she needed was tan-colored, fairly large, and labeled with a wizard's rune on the spine. Silently she ran her eyes along the shelves lining the walls, along row after row of old ma.n.u.scripts, scrolls, and bound books. Half an hour later, she found the one she wanted, crammed on a bottom shelf beneath a stack of moldy vellum sheets.
Teza pulled it out and nearly dropped it in surprise. It was much heavier than she had expected and was bound with something much smoother and softer to the touch than leather. She hefted it. It seemed to be the right book. It had the sigil on the spine and the tan-colored binding. It must have belonged to a wizard at one time, but what was it doing here, and what was so important about it that someone would pay to have it stolen?
Teza tried to open it, but discovered something else very odd. Someone had attached hair to the book from top to bottom along both edges of the cover. The hair was then braided, tying the book closed to casual view. The braid lay soft under Teza's fingers, as soft and fine as human hair.
Without quite knowing why, Teza grew angry. She began to have the feeling Rafbit had not told her every- thing she ought to know about this book. She tucked the tome under her arm and fled noiselessly back the way she had come, to the cavern where the aughisky waited for her.
She had planned to meet Rafbit and his customer before dawn, but first, she told the water horse to take her to her bolt-hole. The hole, nothing more than an abandoned shack at the edge of the city, was her hiding place in time of need. Obediently, the aughisky carried her to the old hut. As she dismounted, he neighed impatiently and slammed his hoof on the frozen ground. Teza knew the signs. He was hungry.
”Wait,” she asked. ”I will be quick. Then you may go.”
Carrying the book, she slipped into the old shack. Her cold fingers fumbled with the flint and steel over a lamp she had left there. When the flame was burning, the woman laid the book on her lap and carefully began to unbraid the hair. In the light, she could see now the hair was red, a deep coppery hue that gleamed in the lamplight. Softly it flowed through her fingers until the book fell open on her knees.
Teza stared in delight. Full-length ill.u.s.trations, beautifully illuminated with delicate traceries, bold colors, and bright gold leaf, covered each page. There were no words or letters or even runes, only exquisitely detailed pictures.
Teza turned the thick pages to the beginning. She could not read, yet she did not have to to understand the story.
The pictures portrayed a romance between a lovely red-haired woman and a dark-haired, serious-looking young man.
They met in a garden of peonies and roses, and the ill.u.s.trations continued their tale in a series of scenes from a dance, a hunt, and a picnic, as the couple's pa.s.sion grew deeper.
Then the atmosphere of the pictures changed. The drawings became harsher; the colors s.h.i.+fted to hues of red and black; the expression on the lovers' faces turned to anger and sadness.
Teza sat enthralled by the drama unfolding on her lap. She was so engrossed, she did not immediately notice what began to happen. As she studied one picture of the man and the woman in a gloomy room, the figures s.h.i.+fted slightly on the page. The man's face turned down into a scowl, and the woman took a step back.
Teza suddenly gaped. Before her eyes the small painting of the man strode forward and viciously backhanded the woman. She fell backward against a stone wall.
Teza's fingers tightened on the cover. ”You nasty little-” she began, without realizing what she was talking to.
Then the tiny woman climbed to her feet. She wiped blood from her mouth, tore a ring off her finger, and flung it at the young man. No words were spoken, but Teza could see the fury on the woman's face, and the devastation on the man's. The painted lady turned to leave, when in one swift movement, the man grabbed her long, braided hair. His hands lifted in a strange movement, his lips mouthed silent words, and in a brilliant flash of silver light that made Teza blink, the woman disappeared. When Teza looked again, the young man was alone, standing as still as before and holding a large tan book.
”What is this?” Teza muttered irritably. She flipped back to the other pages, but none of the remaining picturesmoved. Finally she turned past the man and his book to the last page. The last ill.u.s.tration was the strangest of all. In the upper left was a small portrait of the woman, her oval face filled with pleading and her large green eyes brimmed with tears. The center of the picture revealed the book with its binding of red hair unbraided. A dagger pierced the pages, and blood dripped off the binding. At the bottom right, another portrait of the woman showed her joyfully happy.
A horse-thief though she was, Teza was not stupid. Her mind leapt to the obvious conclusion that the lady in the pictures had been transformed into a book by a wizard, and that book was the very one she was holding. That would help explain the red hair and the odd binding of what felt like human skin. What it did not explain was what Teza should do with it now.
If she understood the last picture correctly, a way to free the trapped lady was to open the book and stab it with a dagger. Simple enough. Yet what would that accomplish? Would the knife free her or kill her? And who was she? Why did she make her lover angry? Did she deserve to be transformed, or was her punishment cruelly unjust?
Teza didn't know, and there weren't nearly enough answers in the book. Should she trust her first instincts and break the spell, or take the book to Rafbit and his customer? And for that matter, Teza thought, her anger stirring again, who was this customer, and what did he want with this specific book?
Teza had the distinct impression she was being used, not tested, and she resented it. The job had been easy, even for her, but she was the only one taking the risks, and Rafbit probably figured she was too illiterate to be interested in a book. Maybe he didn't know what was in it either.
She quickly made up her mind to take the book to Rafbit. ”But that loud-mouthed half-breed better have some answers,” she muttered as she blew out her lamp.
Teza gently closed the book, leaving the hair unbraided, then mounted the aughisky and rode to find her friend at the agreed meeting place near the docks. The water horse, impatient to be away, cantered rapidly through the fog-hung streets, and his green eyes glowed like lamps in the night.
As they neared Immilmar's port facility, with its maze of storehouses, taverns, merchant offices, and docks, Teza slowed the horse to a walk. He moved quietly along the deserted roads to the last pier in the harbor. The air hung thick and heavy with the odors of wet timbers and rotting trash, and the watery smells of Lake Ashane.
Teza gripped the book tightly under her arm, where it remained hidden by her cloak. There was no tingle of magic power to this book, no inherent feeling of a human presence beneath the binding of skin and hair, but Teza sensed somehow that the lady of the book was still alive, trapped in an inanimate form and able to reveal herself only by the beautiful illuminations in her pages. Perhaps she was even aware of what was going on. Teza had always been a firm believer in freedom-particularly her own-and the woman's plight stirred her heart.
At that moment, she spotted a tiny light glowing in the shadow of a shed at the base of the last pier. The light blinked three times in the arranged signal. The aughisky walked toward it, his legs stiff and his nostrils flared. He was so close to the water, his entire body trembled.
Teza ran a hand down his silken neck. ”A few minutes more, my beauty,” she whispered.
Teza!” Rafbit's voice echoed out of the darkness.
The horse-thief winced at his volume. ”I'm here,” she called softly.
The half-elf s lean form and a second taller figure stepped out of the shadow. ”Do you have it?” Rafbit questioned. His voice sounded strung tight with tension.
Teza hesitated answering until the aughisky stopped about five paces away from the two forms. The intense darkness that shrouded the bay and the pier around them was so black Teza could barely make out Rafbit's face. She could see nothing of the person beside him. ”Who is your companion?” she asked, stalling for time.
”The customer,” Rafbit snapped. ”Do you have the book?”
The woman stared at her friend. His white skin glimmered, as pale as a winter moon, and the hand that held the tiny lamp shook perceptibly. His eyes looked everywhere but at her. An alarm went off in Teza's head. ”I have a book,”
she replied carefully. ”But can your customer identify it so we all know the book is the right one?”
The stranger spoke then. ”It is large, heavy, bound with a braid of red, and bears the sigil of the Wizard Ashroth.”
His words were colder than ice and deep with menace. ”Dismount and give me the book,” he charged.
Almost against her will, Teza slid off the aughisky, compelled by the powerful voice. ”What do you want with this book?” she hissed.
The lamp in Rafbit's hand flared to a brilliant star, throwing a veil of light over the three people and the horse. As the stranger strode forward, the sudden glow exposed his clothes as robes of crimson red.
Teza backed up against the aughisky, appalled. A Red Wizard of Thay-one of Rashemen's bitterest enemies- and he was standing brazenly on the docks of the Huhrong's own city.
”The book is mine!” the Red Wizard snarled viciously. ”Stolen from me nearly thirty years ago. I traced it at last to Lord Duronh's library, and if you have it now, you will give it to me before I flay you alive.”
Teza's eyes narrowed. She could see the wizard's face now, lean as a wolfs, gray and cruel, but with the same dark intensity as the young man in the book. She recognized immediately the man who had raged at his lover enough to strike her and then imprison her in a book.
The young thief felt her blood begin to burn, not only at the danger of facing a Red Wizard and the ferocious pos-sessiveness he exuded but at Rafbit as well. Her friend had betrayed her, and from the s.h.i.+fting look of his eyes, he had done it deliberately.
Teza thought no more about her decision. With the swiftness of a practiced pickpocket, she pulled a slim daggerout of her boot, drew the book from her cloak, yanked it open, and stabbed the blade deep into the pages.
The wizard roared with rage.
A pool of blood welled up over the wound. Almost immediately, a bright silver beam flared up from the book, followed by another and another until the tome resembled a starburst. Momentarily dazzled, Teza dropped it on the muddy ground and fell back in astonishment.
”No!” shrieked the wizard. He raised his hands to countermand the dissolved spell, but he was too late. The cover of the book began to expand. Pulsating with its silver light, it stretched taller and taller until it reached the height of a full-grown woman. The red hair cascaded down her shoulders. Her face resumed its shape, as lovely and as young as the portrait in the book.
A frigid draft from the lake swept around the docks, swirling the fog. The silver light faded. The lady of the book stood before the three people, proud and fierce. Blood trickled unnoticed down her shoulder. She flung Teza's dagger at the wizard's feet.
”How dare you,” she breathed in a voice thick with contempt. ”How dare you think to possess me!”
Stunned and mute, Teza stared from the woman to the wizard. They were glaring at each other, so totally absorbed in their confrontation they did not acknowledge anyone else.