“I'm used to working by lantern light,” Juhg said.
“At the Library?”
“Yes.”
Yurial frowned. “Then it's a wonder you're not blind as a bat.”
Juhg smiled at her. “I'm a dweller. Our eyesight is a little better and a little more indestructible than a human's.”
“I'll take your word for it.” She looked at the rigging beside Juhg. “Do you mind company?”
“Not at all.” Juhg put his charcoal into a bag and closed the journal.
“I brought you something to eat.” Yurial offered the plate.
“I've already eaten.”
“Not nearly enough, according to Raisho.”
“How would he know? He's been looking out for the ship all day.”
Yurial settled in beside Juhg. “Because he has spies
everywhere
,” she replied mysteriously. She said it in a half whisper and in such a conspiratorial manner that Juhg was chuckling in spite of the danger that surrounded them.
“I truly wish you hadn't come,” he told her.
Sniffing with feigned disdain, Yurial said, “I have to admit, I've had far better reactions to the offer of my company.”
“It's not your company I'm worried about,” Juhg said. “It's your safety.”
Yurial leaned back against the rigging and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I can look out for myself, Grandmagister.”
Juhg frowned. He remembered Yurial as a child, and that had only seemed like yesterday. He was never going to get used to how quickly human children grew. “I meant no insult.”
“Then don't treat me as if I were a child,” Yurial stated flatly, but without anger. “I am, for better or worse, the Minstrel Ordal now. I will carry on my father's office to the best of my ability.” She took a deep breath and relaxed a little. “That also means not trying to get myself killed, thank you very much.”
“I apologize,” Juhg said.
“You should. It's hard enough being the first female Minstrel Ordal in five generations without everyone making a fuss about it.”
“Everyone?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps not everyone,” she grudgingly admitted, “but enough so that it is a sore point. The thing is, no one knows more about the Steadfast River than Minstrel Ordal. Even me.” She looked at him. “Why else do you think Wick sent you to the Minstrel Ordal to answer a question that you should have known yourself?”
Juhg had to admit that was true. If he hadn't been so tired from the long trip and paranoid about being attacked in his sleep as he had been on the way to Deldal's Mills where he'd encountered Minstrel Ordal, he would have known the answer to the puzzle Grandmagister Lamplighter had left in his first journal from the Cinder Clouds Islands.
Yurial gazed out into the darkness. “I know this river and these lands. If not from my time on it and through it, then from the stories I've had from the previous Minstrel Ordals. I had to memorize a good bit of history and lore, I'll have you know.”
“Yes,” Juhg agreed. “I know that you have.” He gazed at the plate's contents. “What are these?”
“Cookies.”
“I'd guessed that from the round shape,” Juhg said dryly.
“I baked them myself,” Yurial said. “My mother created the recipe. Wick liked them a lot as I recall.”
Not wanting to chance offending his friend any further, Juhg picked up a cookie and took a bite. It was surprisingly sweet and still warm from the oven. “Delicious,” he said.
“Have another.”
Juhg helped himself to another but said, “You didn't come out here to feed me cookies.”
“No.”
“You don't know any more about the Crocodile's Throat than I do, do you?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Yurial sighed. “I came out here to tell you to trust yourself, Juhg.”
“Me?” Juhg was surprised.
“Yes.”
“I do trust myself.”
Yurial looked at him knowingly. “Not yet you don't. You have doubts about your ability to handle whatever lies ahead of us.”
Juhg started to object automatically, then thought better of it. “Do you think that you can handle whatever is ahead of us?”
“I don't know. That isn't what I've decided to concentrate on.”
“Then what?”
“I've decided,” Yurial said, “that I will meet whatever lies ahead of us to the best of my ability. That's the promise I made to my father as he lay dying.”
Juhg remained silent.
“And at some point, since Wick took his leave of you by choice and knew that potentially what we're here to do now would come back to haunt you, I think he elicited the same promise from you.”
After a moment, Juhg said, “He didn't ask in so many words.”
“But you knew what he wanted.”
“Yes.” Juhg nodded. “He told me he knew he was leaving the Libraries in the best hands available. He also knew that I would be more able to send the books back out of the Libraries and into the hands of the people than he would ever have been able to do.”
“Wick did love to protect those books.” Yurial smiled.
“Did you knowâ” Juhg's voice failed him for a moment. “Did you know that
I
was the one responsible for almost destroying the Vault of All Known Knowledge?”
“I did. My father told me. He learned it from Craugh.”
“Craugh.”
“Craugh said you were not to blame,” Yurial went on. “He was very clear about that. He explained that the book you carried was a trap, one so clever that not even he nor Wick had puzzled it out. Until it had already snapped closed.”
Juhg remembered the roaring fires and the bloody violence that had erupted within the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Those images would never leave him as long as he lived.
“You're fallible, Juhg,” the young woman said. “Just as Wick was during the years that I knew him. He didn't always know what was best. But he always tried to do his best.”
“I know.”
“You can't let the fear you're feeling stop you.”
“But what if I make a mistake?” Juhg asked quietly so that none would hear.
“Evidently Craugh has already made a mistake, or else he would be here now and there wouldn't have been blood all over his cabin.”
“Exactly what happened to Craugh remains to be seen,” Yurial said. “I've seen that old wizard walk through situations that left everyone around him dead.”
Juhg looked at her.
Yurial sighed and shrugged. “Okay, that's probably not what I should have said.”
“No.”
“But what I'm getting at is that Craugh is a survivor. He's always told me not to count him out till I see his smoldering corpse.”
Juhg knew that was true.
“What I'm saying,” Yurial told him, “is that Wick sent
you
to see this through to its completion. Not Craugh.”
“Why?”
“I don't know. I suppose when we find the answers to the other questions we have, we'll know the answer to that one as well.”
If we live
, Juhg thought morosely.
Old Ones willing, if I'm to be taken, don't let it be in failure
.
“Your redemption for what happened to the Vault of All Known Knowledge,” Yurial said, “doesn't lie in dying for the right reasons. You're supposed to
live
for them.”
“I know,” Juhg said. “I know.”
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Darbrit's Landing stood cloaked in shadows, vines, and the low branches of tall trees. Remnants of stone buildings and of the ten-foot stone wall that had surrounded the city lay mired in the thick black mud. All of them tilted at crazed angles. Creatures moved within the tall brush on either side of the Steadfast River. A bridge, somehow miraculously whole, curved in an arch above the water and blocked
Moonsdreamer
's progress. Bird calls, cat screams, and lizards bellowing filled the thick silence.
“Drop the anchor,” Raisho ordered. “Archers, stand alert.”
“Aye, cap'n,” the crew responded.
Raisho joined Juhg at the prow. Together, with Yurial, they stood staring out over the dead city.
Gently, her sails furled so that she no longer felt the weak push of the wind that had brought her to Darbrit's Landing,
Moonsdreamer
floated back to the length of the anchor chain and rode the rise and fall of the slow current.
“Is this it then?” Raisho asked.
“This is Darbrit's Landing,” Yurial answered. “What's left of it, anyway.”
“Ye ever been 'ere?” Raisho asked.
“No.”
“'Ow 'bout ye, scribbler?”
“No,” Juhg replied.
“Well,” Raisho mused, “Grandmagister Lamplighter musta been. Otherwise 'e'd never have sent ye up this far.” The young captain glanced around. “All this
black mud, though, makes me think of them bog beasts we ended up fightin' in Shark's Maw Cove.”
Silently, Juhg agreed.
“Guess there's no 'elpin' it,” Raisho commented.
“What?” Juhg asked.
“If 'n nobody's come out 'ere to meet us, looks like we'll be goin' over there to meet them.”
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Nearly two hours later, Raisho was finally satisfied the warriors going ashore were fully provisioned. Juhg knew his friend hated splitting his crew, but there'd been no helping that. Fortunately, Raisho had been carrying an extra complement of warriors from Greydawn Moors because he'd been providing protection for Juhg out in the Blood-Soaked Sea.
Juhg clambered down the fishing net hung over the ship's side and into the waiting longboat. Yurial joined him next. He knew better than to protest her choice to accompany him. He'd only have been wasting time, and she did know more about the area than he did.
He sat in the stern and watched monkeys capering through the branches, chattering with anxious fear. Thankfully they hadn't encountered any more spiders. But the temperature was greater than Juhg would have thought. Where Calmpoint had been cool because of the Gentlewind Sea, and even Deldal's Mills was only slightly warmer, Darbrit's Landing was almost sweltering.
Raisho climbed down into the longboat to join them.
“Shouldn't you stay aboard the ship?” Juhg asked.
The young captain seated his cutlass over his shoulder and shook his shaggy head. “Not with ye out an' about by yerself.” He rolled his shoulders. “Besides, I'd rather be runnin' from trouble than sittin' in that ship a-waitin' fer it to find me.” He grimaced. “From the looks of this place, that won't take any time at all.”
The boat crew rowed for shore at Raisho's direction. Their oars made little noise in the water. Above, monkeys raced along the trees, squealing threats and tossing down branches.
“What are we lookin' for again?” Raisho asked.
“Jaramak's Aerie,” Juhg answered, remembering the passage from Grandmagister Lamplighter's last journal.
“Do ye know what it is?”
“No. But it stands to reason that it would be above ground. Something like that, I think we'll notice.” Of course, that wasn't necessarily true. Many woodlands elves had gotten good at hiding their homes and cities in the branches of trees. Even the rope bridges connecting them were often unnoticeable.
The boat crew rowed to the nearest pier. All of the piers were made of stone and jutted out into the wide river at certain points. If there were any docks that had been made of wood, nothing of them remained.
“Weapons drawn,” Raisho said. Then he nodded to the young sailor standing in the boat's prow. “Toss that line an' pull us alongside.”
The sailor flipped the end of the line expertly over one of the stone pillars sunk into the mud holding up that end of the stone dock. Hand over hand, he pulled the boat up next to the dock.
At Raisho's instruction, swordsmen took the lead, flanked swiftly by archers.
Thankfully someone in the past had crafted a flight of stairs leading up to the dock. If they hadn't, Juhg would have been hard-pressed to climb up. Peering down into the murky water, he got the sense that the stair extended down into the depths for a ways, proof that the whole city had at one time sat higher on the river. Or perhaps the river had risen.