The audience laughed
at
Juhg, not
with
him. A few disparaging comments about short people and dwellers reached his sensitive ears. His face flamed slightly, but it was as much from anger as from embarrassment.
“Greetings,” Juhg said bravely. And he smiled just the way Barndal Krunk had suggested in his book,
Oratories of Those Who Would Be Listened To
. It didn't work and he felt stupid standing there grinning like a loon. He also tried imagining the audience was sitting there in their underwear, but that didn't work either. He was fairly certain several of the poor sailors of the nearby Twisted Eel River didn't own underwear. And imagining the fierce Blade Works Forge dwarves in their underwear was just too horrible to contemplate.
Now, for the first time, utter silence filled the great hall.
Juhg tried to find Craugh out in the audience, hoping to find a friendly face to focus on.
If that's the friendliest face you can hope to find
, he told himself,
you might just as well hang yourself on this stage
.
“As many of you have come to know these past two days,” Juhg ventured on, knowing that there were some among the assembly now who had only arrived, “I am Grandmagister of the Vault of All Known Knowledge, the Great Library that was built near the end of the Cataclysm to save the books from Lord Kharrion's goblinkin horde.”
“Dwellers is worthless!” someone roared from the back. A chorus of boos followed.
Patiently, Juhg waited for the remonstrations to die away. He gripped the edges of the too-wide lectern. “I sent heralds to gather you all here,” he went on, “in the hope of presenting my vision of schools along the Shattered Coast.”
“Schools!” someone yelled. “Fish got schools! We ain't fish!”
“Your children and their children need educations,” Juhg said. “With Lord Kharrion defeated, with the goblinkin horde in abeyanceâ”
“They ain't in abeyance!” someone shouted. “They's down to the south! Where they always been! We need to go down there an' burn 'em all out rather than sittin' here on our duffs listenin' to a halfer tryin' to convince us he's important!”
Cheering broke out immediately.
Thoughts of war bring these people together, but peacetime divides them
. Juhg couldn't believe it.
“We should all get us an ale down at Keelhauler's Tavern an' head on out down there.”
And more wars have started with tankards of foaming ale
. Juhg raised his voice. “You'll have your chance at the goblinkin soon enough. But if you aren't ready for them, they'll destroy you.”
That declaration set off another wave of hostility.
An elf stood up in the front row. His two great wolves roused with him, growling fiercely as they stood with their forelegs on the arms of his chair and rose nearly to their master's shoulders.
He was an elven warder, marked by his green leathers, bow, and pointed ears as well as the animal companions he kept. His long hair was the color of poplar bark and stood out against the golden skin. Amethyst eyes glinted like stone. Thin and beautiful and arrogant, the elf leaned on his unstrung bow and gazed at the assembly.
“Quiet,” he said. “I wish to hear what the halfer has to say.”
A group of rough-hewn sailors stood up in the back. “We don't take no orders 'cept from our cap'n,
elf
,” one of their number said. He made the word a curse.
The elf smiled lazily. “You'll do well to take orders from me, human. Or at least not feel so emboldened in my presence. Your continued survival could count on that.”
A dwarf stood up only a few feet from the elf. His gnarled hand held a battle-axe that was taller than he was. Scars marked his face and arms, offering testimony to a warrior's life and not a miner's. His fierce beard looked like the hide ripped from a bear but was stippled through with gray. “That'll be enough threats, Oryn.”
Still smiling casually, the elf turned to face the dwarf. “Really, Faldraak? You should know me well enough to know that I don't make threats. I make promises.”
“An' you don't have sense enough to come in from the rain,” Faldraak accused. “Are you prepared to fight a crew of humans?”
“I am,” Oryn replied. “The only question is whether or not I have to fight a dwarf as well.”
Several other elves stood up. “Oryn won't fight alone,” one of them promised.
Armor clanking, a dozen dwarves flanked Faldraak.
“Fight!” someone in the back yelled. “There's gonna be a fight between the elves and the dwarves!”
Unable to bear it any longer, Juhg gave in to his anger. “
Stop!
” Amplified by the construction of the stage, his voice rang out over the assembly hall with shocking loudness. Before he knew it, he'd abandoned the lectern and stood at the stage's edge.
The crowd turned on Juhg at once, as if suddenly realizing their presence and the discomfort between them there was his entire fault.
Too late, Juhg realized that he should have stayed behind the lectern. At least it would have offered some shelter against arrows and throwing knives. Still, his fear wasn't enough to quiet the anger that moved within him.
“Look at you!” he accused. “Ready to fight each other over a few harsh words!” He stood on trembling legs but found he couldn't back away from his own fight with them. “Is this the kind of world you want to give each other? One where you have to fight each other instead of the goblinkin?”
No one said anything. All eyes were upon him.
“Because that's how it was before Lord Kharrion gathered the goblinkin tribes, you know,” Juhg said. “Before he came among them, they were wary and distrustful of each other. They preyed on each other, thieving and murdering among themselves because they didn't like fighting humans, dwarves, or elves. But Kharrion taught them to work together.
And they very nearly destroyed the world
.”
The audience stood quietly listening to Juhg for the first time in three days.
“Now that the goblinkin aren't the threat they used to be,” Juhg said, “maybe you can go back to killing each other over territory nobody wants or needs. Or to feel secure. Or over harsh words. Or any of other reasons people have found to go to war over since groups first gathered.”
“Make your point, halfer,” a human merchant said. He was dressed in finery and accompanied by a dozen armed guards. Age and success had turned him plump and soft. His hair was black but the color looked false. Jeweled rings glinted on his fingers. “For two days, you've stood up there and ranted and raved about the Library's existence, which”âhe turned to address the crowdâ“I think nobody really cares about.”
A few in the audience agreed with him.
“I'd heard the Library existed only a few years ago,” the human continued. “There was some mention of a battle against a man named Aldhran Khempus. Supposedly, there are
two
libraries, in fact.”
“Yes,” Juhg said, “there are.” He had discovered the second while rescuing Grandmagister Lamplighter and searching for
The Book of Time
.
“In the past,” the merchant said, “simply owning a book was enough to get you killed not only by the goblinkin, but generally by anyone who found you with one.”
“The times are changing,” Juhg said.
“You're only here,” the merchant continued, “because you want the people here to help aid in your defense from the goblinkin. I've heard they've sent raiding parties out to your little island.”
“They have,” Juhg admitted. “Those goblinkin raiding parties haven't succeeded in reaching Greydawn Moors. They never will. The island's defenders will never allow that to happen.”
“How many dwellers are among those defenders?” the human taunted.
“Dwellers,” Juhg said, “aren't warriors. We were charged by the Old Ones to become the keepers of the Great Library.”
“That's what you do?”
“Yes.”
The human held up his hands in fake supplication. “Then why did you call us here, telling us that the fate of the world rested in our hands?”
“Because it does,” Juhg said.
“How?”
Leaping from the stage, Juhg opened his backpack, took several books from it, and walked to the elven warder and surveyed him. “You're a Fire Lily elf from the Joksdam Still Waters.”
Oryn was unimpressed. “A number of those present know who I am.”
Opening the book, Juhg flipped to one of the illustrations that showed the wide river that wound through what had once been Teldane's Bounty but was now the Shattered Coast. “But I know the history of your people. I know what Joksdam Still Waters looked like when it was whole, when it was a place of beauty and not a place of dead trees and cities.”
The picture was in color, elaborately inked and designed to catch the eye. It showed an elven warder on a leaf boat sculling the waters and battling a sea troll three times his size.
Reverently, Oryn took the book. “Kaece the Swift,” he marveled. The other elven warders crowded in around him to peer over his shoulder.
“Yes.” Juhg had deliberately ordered the story of Kaece the Swift copied. “This is his story, Oryn. His
true
story. Before Lord Kharrion came among the Fire Lily elves and destroyed them.” He changed his language to the elven tongue. “And it's written in the language of your people.”
Cautiously, Oryn flipped through the book, stopping at several other pictures. All of them were in color, which had drawn a lot of complaints from Juhg's overworked Library staff, but he'd wanted to make a good impression.
“You know his story?” Oryn asked.
“I've read it,” Juhg said.
“There have been few like him.”
“I know.”
Oryn looked at Juhg with new respect. “You have read this?”
“Yes.”
“Could you”âhe hesitated, because elves were haughty beings and didn't like being beholden to anotherâ“read this to me?”
“I will.”
Oryn's hands closed tightly around the book. “What do you want for such a book?”
“The book is yours,” Juhg said. “It's the Library's gift to you.”
“I can't just accept such a gift.” Nor did Oryn seem especially desirous of returning the book. “There must be something I can give you in return.”
“There is,” Juhg said.
Wariness entered the amethyst eyes.
“Give me your promise that you will let me teach you to read this book,” Juhg said. “And others like it. Whether at the Vault of All Known Knowledge, your home, or someplace else you might wish to meet. And promise me too that you will teach at least two others to read this book, and that they will each teach two more, and that the teaching will continue.”
“I have two sons and a daughter,” Oryn said. “I give you my word that I will do as you ask.”
“Thank you,” Juhg said. He turned to Faldraak and took out another book. “You're of the Ringing Anvil dwarves.”
“I am,” Faldraak replied proudly. “Ringing Anvil steel is like no other. We're known for it.”
“Your people once built armor for kings,” Juhg said. “And you constructed iron figureheads and rams for ships that were magically made so they wouldn't rust.”
Faldraak shook his shaggy head. “A myth, nothing more.”
Dwarves and magic didn't get along well. Everyone knew that. Humans and elves were more open to it, though elves held more with nature and humans tended to be more destructive.
Juhg opened the book. “The secret of that magically imbued iron was the Ringing Anvil clan's alone. They wrested the process from a dragon named Kallenmarsdak who lived long ago and high up in the Boar's Snout Mountains.”
The dwarf's eyes widened. “Not many know that tale.”
“I know more than the tale,” Juhg said quietly. “I know the secret of how magic was put into that iron.”
“No,” Faldraak whispered hoarsely.
Juhg opened the book to a picture of a dwarf grabbing hold of the toe of a dragon swooping over a mountaintop with the setting sun in the background. “Drathnon the Bold. The Ringing Anvil dwarf who bearded Kallenmarsdak in his lair.”
Faldraak snatched the book from Juhg's hands. “The secret of the magical iron lies in here?”
“It does.”
“And you would give it to me?”
“It's yours.”