In Pursuit Of Wisdom (Book 1) (7 page)

N. Mist

Utter darkness.  This would never do.  He wondered if they always stole something from would be Masters, or just him. 
Probably just me. 
This world always seemed to close in on him, to deal with him unfairly.  There were no breaks for a short, ugly, red-headed thief with mis-matched eyes.  Nothing came easy for Trevor Blink.

So be it. 
Waving the parchment in front of him slowly in every direction, the glowing ink provided a foot of light, allowing him to get his bearings.  To his left and right were the cave walls.  Conveniently, a torch was hanging on the left.  Using some stones on the cave floor, he was able to smack them together to create the occasional spark.  An hour later, covered in sweat, and having made more noise than any thief should be allowed, he had captured a spark on his parchment, which eventually caught fire, which he eventually transferred to his torch. 
I thought we were testing the techniques of a Thief, not a bloody Ranger.

He moved on.  The cave did not offer any side paths or options.  It just kept going further and further down, winding around and doubling back amongst itself.  Trevor had no sense
of time as he walked, torch aloft.  But it must have been a few hours since he’d started, and he knew he was descending the whole time.  The air was stale this far down; there was oxygen, but it smelled—even tasted—different.  His torch still burned.

Rounding a curve in the path of the cave, he saw the roof of the cave expanding, just as the path began to widen until he finally reached the edge of the bend in the path.  It opened up into a larger cavern, now twenty or thirty yards wide and another twenty yards from floor to ceiling.  A ring of torches dotted the massive underground grotto.

“No Thief has passed on my watch, and you won’t be the first!”  The mail-clad knight shouted. He stood next to a small fire pit, whose flames reflected and danced off his shiny plate.  He also had Trevor’s undivided attention.

Polished to a fine gleam, the knight’s armor was in ridiculously good condition.  Only the wealthiest merchants or city officials could afford a guard such as this. 
Or the Guild,
he thought ruefully.

It was then that Trevor made out what the knight was guarding:  A wooden rope bridge, maybe twenty-five feet across, spanned a chasm at the back end of this underground cavern.  On the other side of the bridge was a door.  The knight stood in front of the narrow bridge, sword drawn, but he did not move.

“Who are you?” Trevor shouted from a safe distance.

“I think it’s obvious,” came the knight’s response.  He didn’t even lift his visor.

“I don’t suppose you’d let me cross if I agreed to split the gold with you?”  Trevor rolled the dice, and guessed the knight knew about the gold.

“I am already under a more lucrative contract.  And besides—unlike your ilk, I do not double-cross those who put their trust in me.  As I said, no thief has passed on my watch.”  He drew a massive sword.

Trevor looked at the knight.  He believed him.  The man was huge, easily a foot and then some taller than him.  He thought about poison darts, but there was no chance in hell a dart would penetrate his plate mail.  He had seen other knights; Lord Arrington had several in the city guard.  But this knight looked almost regal in his shiny, dent-free mail. 
Not regal—ostentatious.

Of course, the Guild earns a small portion from all the thieves’ takes—at least, those they knew about from members of the Guild
. 
One of the long-running jokes amongst the Guild is that they got robbed more than anyone.  Yet they were still fantastically well-funded. 
Certainly wealthy enough to rent a knight.

Trevor did not see the knight armed with any long-distance weapons, and he did not appear to be in a mood to leave his post, knowing full-well that Trevor held the edge in quickness, given his heavy armor.  But standing there in front of the narrow bridge, sword drawn—the knight could not be in a better position.  Furthermore, Trevor quickly ruled out a direct confrontation.  The thought of the knight slicing his head off and rolling his body over the edge of the chasm gave him more than a pause. 
‘No thieves have passed on my watch’…I wonder how many failed attempts landed a thief at the bottom of this pit.

Watch? 
Of course! 
Backing up, still twenty yards away from the knight, he slowly retreated out of sight around the bend.  He heard the knight yelling, “Come back and fight little thief!  You cannot return!”

Up off the cave floor about ten feet was a natural rock shelf in the cave formation.  Trevor soundlessly scrambled up there, and with a small sigh, he extinguished his torch.  There was just a glimmer of light from around the curve in the path leading to the well-lit cavern that he could see his hand in front of his face.  He aimed to change that.

Carefully applying some make-up to his hands, face, and parts of his clothes to blend perfectly with the rock face, he waited patiently off the ground, in the dark shadows.  He even nibbled on a piece of flatbread, all the while thinking of the knight around the corner, a man whose armor would feed him for a month.  If he was right…

Seven or ten hours later (Trevor had no way of gaging time), sure enough, he heard a clanking and squeaking coming toward him.  A knight was coming down the way he had come, passing below without so much as a glance up toward Trevor.  He heard a shout from the first knight, and they obviously talked.  Sword drawn, the first knight (presumably), slowly walked back
down the way the other knight and Trevor had come.  He had a torch with him in his other hand.  The light passed close to Trevor, but all the knight saw was rock.  He moved on.

After about an hour or longer had passed, Trevor put his plan into action.  He stretched a trip wire from his pack across the floor of the cave, still far around the bend and out of sight from the bridge.  He drizzled some of the black “sticky draught” a few feet behind the trip wire.  This was the first phase of his plan to get past the knight.

Returning to his alcove, Trevor waited, allowing himself a few hours of Thief’s Sleep—a light sleep awakened by “the click of a lock” as they say.  But it was not a lock clicking that awoke him this time.

Crashing to the ground with startled curses was a fully-clad knight, decked out in the finest, heaviest plate mail, as he stumbled over the trip wire.  As the six-foot-five behemoth sought to push himself up from the cave floor, he was doubly surprised to find his breastplate stuck irretrievably to the cave floor.  “What devilry is this, Thief!”  The knight was slowly trying to fold his arms back toward his hip to reach for his sword.

Trevor was down from the alcove and atop of the knight with amazing speed.  Wordlessly, he pulled his helm off and jabbed his small dagger through the light chain mail and padding underneath.  The knight’s spine was cut at the base of his skull, and he died with a scream that ended abruptly. 
How’s that armor working for you now, knight?

~Veronica~

Silverfist swirled the wine in his cup and considered Veronica. 
She could be one of the greatest assassins of our generation.
  Amazing agility for a woman so tall.  Clever.  Stronger than some men.  Flexible.  Adaptable.  Practical. 
But most importantly—she is guilt free.  Never hesitates, never expresses remorse.  Quite the opposite, actually.  That makes all the difference if you are to earn a living by ending a life.

Taking a sip, he began to outline the third challenge that stood between her and the rank of Master.  “Our spies have uncovered a trek that is underway just north of here in our sister port city of Gaust, just across the inlet.  We believe there are four men travelling from the inland village of Brigg
—two young mages, guarded by a seasoned ranger and a fighter.  Your final challenge will be to remove two of them.”

~Magi~

The library was immense.  It was the largest structure Magi or Kyle had ever seen in their lives. 
After the late night and having slept most of the day, the sun was now setting over the Sea of Love, and long shadows fell across three massive columns that marked the library’s entrance.  Most of the streets were dirty in Gaust, especially the closer one got to the docks.  Here, near the city center, however, the streets were unusually clean.  Almost pristine.  There were no merchant hovels, no peddlers, no beggars.  The air smelled briny this close to the sea, but it was a salty scent, not a fishy one.

Magi saw
several townspeople dressed in wealthy garments, complete with ruffles and fine tunics made of bright colors that fell below the waist, belted neatly.  Some people even dared to wear white.  And unlike most knights that relied on mismatched, dented armor, Magi saw more than one with their plate polished to a high gleam.  Some were even wealthy enough to ride openly on horses.

“Lord Corovant lives there,” commented Lionel, who looked like a
half-dead goat and smelled worse.  The good news was that he smelled better than Sindar, who stayed in their room at the inn, nursing the after effects of their late night.  “Bring back yer ruddy scroll and let’s be done with this bloody port,” he had said after retching for the umpteenth time.

So the three of them
had left the big warrior and headed out to the city center, and were now focused on steps of the Great Library.  “Come, let us find—what’s his name, Magi?” asked Lionel.

“Wyzle
,” Magi reminded him.  He had a small headache himself, but it couldn’t have been nearly as bad as what the two men were feeling.

“Wyzle.  Yes, something like that.  Come.”  Up the steps he led them.

As they entered the massive alcove, a scribe in white robes belted with simple rope stopped to greet them.  His robes were so bright they hurt Magi’s eyes. 
Poverty hasn’t come to the Great Library.
  He had a clean-shaven head and face, and his expression was neither friendly nor suspicious.  “Greetings.  May I help you?”  The scribe wrinkled his nose.

Lionel held out his hand.  “Good day.  I am Lione
l.  I’m looking for a man named, Keeper of the Books.  Can you direct us to him?”

“Perhaps.”  He clasped Lionel’s hand and returned his gaze.  “What business do you have with our Keeper?  He is terribly busy.”

Lionel considered.  “Our business is with your Keeper.  I would prefer to discuss it directly with him.”

The scribe let the words hang in the air uncomfortably.  “Very well. 
I should warn you that he is
quite
busy.  I should be surprised if he will even see you today, and you should be grateful if your audience with him lasts more than five minutes.  But I shall inquire on your behalf with Master Wyzle, our Esteemed Keeper of the Books.”  He turned and headed through a series of rooms, each with three or four scribes bent over books or parchment, carefully writing in silence.

They came to a large, wooden door
that was bolted shut and covered in strange markings.  Lionel looked at his two young mages as if to ask, “
magic?
”  Magi returned Lionel’s silent question with a simple shrug; he had never seen runes such as these.

The scribe in white slid the bolt
back and pushed the heavy door open wide enough for all of them to pass.  It squeaked as they entered the dimly-lit room.  Row upon row of shelves jutted out from the wall, joining with more shelves against the wall to create a dozen paths with books on three sides.  The center of the room was bare of any clutter, but the white marble floor had the same insignia in it that Magi observed on the soldiers’ breastplates from the night before:  a scale balancing a trident and a war hammer.   There were only two torches, one on each wall, whose flickering flames created shifting shadows everywhere.  The other light in the room came from a small oil lamp sitting on a desk at the far end of the room.  It smelled musty in here, as if fresh air avoided the place like the plague. 
A bit of incense might do this room some good. 
There were no windows, and as far as Magi could tell, this was the only door in or out of the room.

Behind the desk was a large man, all in white as well.  The
lamplight reflected off his shaved head, and as he looked up, massive jowls jiggled on either side of his clean-shaven face.  He looked surprised as he set down his quill.

“Thomas, what can I help you with?”

“Keeper, these three say they have business with you, and would not share it with me,” Thomas said with a hint of nervousness. “I have told them that you are very busy, and can spare no more than five minutes. This one calls himself Lionel.”

“Very well.”  The Keeper of the Books stood and approached the three of them.  “
You may leave us, Thomas.”

“As you wish, Keeper.”  Thomas departed through the heavy, open door.

“Your scribe speaks truly,” the ranger said. “My name is Lionel.  You are Wyzle, Keeper of the Books?”

“I am.  What is your business?”  The Keeper looked like his movements were limited to eating and writing.  Mostly eating, if Magi had to guess.  The man looked like a lump of
warm jelly wrapped in white cloth.