The Destruction of the Books by Mel Odom

Author:Mel Odom
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: fantasy, S&S
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2013-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

13

The Bellringer

Before Juhg could move, Craugh swung his staff with blinding speed, with no more apparent thought than he might shoo away a fly. The staff broke the speeding arrow in twain and both pieces hurtled harmlessly by Juhg.

“Move!” Craugh commanded in that steely tone Juhg had heard on occasion before. “Move if you would save your life, apprentice!”

Juhg threw himself to one side and dodged behind the stacks of books. The treacherous books, he couldn’t help thinking. Whoever had designed the trap had constructed it well enough. If there were ever to be any wooden horses of Phamscrifa brought into the Library, a book was surely the vehicle to deliver those enemies in. He placed his back against a stack of books and peered back toward the center of the room.

Craugh stood with both hands on his staff. Galing winds from wherever the monstrous beast and its terrifying rider had come from whipped at the wizard’s robes. The beast snarled, threw its head back and whipped it forward, spitting a line of fiery liquid.

Arcane words Juhg had never heard spilled from the wizard’s lips. Juhg had never seen the language anywhere, and had often felt certain if he ever did find examples of it that he would never want to read it. Wick had mentioned more than once that the older wizards, and Craugh was certainly one of those, had their own language.

Some said the language was from the Dark Times, even before Lord Kharrion had gathered the goblinkin and brought about the Cataclysm. Others said that the truly powerful wizards took their power from some other place, a world removed from the one most people knew, a place of terrible beasts and men where horrible events took place every minute of every day.

It was said that a wizard, a truly powerful wizard, was exposed to that world—like Annealis who was dipped into the River of Time as a baby by his mother so that he would be forever immortal, except for the ear that his mother held him by—for only a short time. The time was supposed to be long enough to gain the power, but not long enough to go mad.

Many of those who sought to wear wizard’s robes were dipped too long or not long enough. Very few were dipped just right. Wizardwork was a very hazardous calling, and not much appreciated by anyone.

Until you have need of a wizard, Juhg thought, watching as Craugh caught the flaming spit in one bare hand and threw it back into the creature’s face.

Smashed full in the face by the seething mass of flames that clung to its obscene features, the creature reared straight up. Evidently the creature could contain the fire inside itself but not endure it the way that dragons could, or perhaps Craugh’s magic altered the flames in some way. Blisters, huge and weeping, appeared on the animal’s face sacked in thin green skin.

Driven by the rearing creature, the four-armed warrior slammed into the room’s tall ceiling.

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