corson hesitated before the bronze door, key in hand. Now that nothing prevented her from unearthing the hoard of the Cymvelans, she felt, despite herself, that it would be unwise to go further. Though Nyctasia stood by, waiting quite calmly, seemingly untroubled, Corson could sense her apprehension and could not help sharing it. But she knew that it was too late to turn back now, no matter what lay beyond. Ever before her mind’s eye was the vision of a chamber heaped with gold and precious gems, hundreds of years in the hoarding, enough and more for a lifetime’s spending…
“What are you waiting for? Get on with it, woman, can’t you?” said Newt, who harbored much the same hopes, and was impatient to commence his new life of opulence and luxury.
“Hold your tongue,” Raphe said sharply. He was resigned to tolerating Newt’s presence, but he did not pretend to be pleased about it. Certainly he would not allow him to speak disrespectfully to Corson. In truth, he too would have liked to tell Corson to hurry, but he was restrained by good manners, as well as a certain well-bred reluctance to reveal his own eagerness for the treasure. But he thought hungrily of the new land that could be bought and cultivated with such a fortune…
“Yes, hush,” Nyctasia said quietly. “Whatever we shall find has waited a very long time, I think. It can wait a little longer. We have time enough.”
She had insisted that only the matriarch be told of their discoveries, and of Garast’s death. Corson had willingly deferred to her judgment in such a matter, and Newt, indeed, had no desire to tell anybody. He refused even to accompany them to the house, arranging instead to meet them at the well next morning.
Lady Nocharis had summoned Diastor and Mesthelde to hear their tale, and they in turn had consulted with a few of the others. None of them was much inclined to join the search, when they heard how arduous it was to negotiate the passages to the locked door. Yet it was clearly impractical to entrust the affair to one of the youngsters, since all of them would insist on going along and getting in the way. In the end, only Raphe had been sent to look after the interests of the Edonaris in the matter, though he’d urged ’Deisha to go in his place. “You’re smaller than I am,” he teased. “You’d fit through all those ghoul-haunted holes, and dark tombs and such, better than I.”
“But you’re stronger, brother mine. You’ll be more use for carrying out the heavy bags of gold and chests of jewels you’ll find down there.” She changed her mind when she realized that Nyctasia planned to return to the underground chamber with Corson, but Nyctasia discouraged her from coming along..
“There’s really very little room for us all in those passages,” she’d explained, more or less truthfully. “And you’re right-the stronger the better for climbing about in there, and possibly for digging too.” And ’Deisha had reluctantly agreed to wait for them at the well.
Nyctasia could not honestly have explained why she felt that the practical, realistic Raphe would be less at risk among these shadows than his fanciful, romantic sister, but as she watched Corson raise the key that would unlock the Cymvelans’ secret, she was relieved to think of ’Deisha safe in the sunshine above.
The door swung out easily, as soon as Corson turned the key, and the others pressed forward anxiously to follow her into the dark room beyond. They stood in a knot in the middle of the floor, their lamps raised, and stared around them at the full-laden shelves that lined the walls of the inner chamber.
They had found the library of the Cymvelan Circle.
“Books!” shouted Corson. “Nothing but a lot of moldy, old, rotting, rutting books! I might have known it would be something not worth a heap of dried dog dung-” Words failed her. Even curses failed her. Nothing could express her bitter disappointment and rancor. Had she been alone, she’d have burst into tears.
Newt had taken a quick look around, then hastened to open a pair of stout chests that stood on either side of the door. But finding both filled with rolled vellum scrolls, he slammed shut the second one, kicked it viciously and sat down on top of it, head in hands, the picture of dejection.
“I don’t suppose any of these are worth anything?” Raphe asked Nyctasia, who was eagerly examining one volume after another, exclaiming over them with delight.
“Worth anything? This collection is priceless,” she cried. “This is wealth beyond a lifetime’s spending, because one could spend many lifetimes studying it.” Clearly, she intended to spend her lifetime doing so.
“Oh, you could rot down here for all eternity, I’ve no doubt,” Corson said. “You were right about that inscription-this is nothing but a tomb for old, dead words. If they’re so priceless, why would the Cymvelans let children get at them?”
“The library wouldn’t have been unattended in those days, I’m sure. There would always have been people here studying or writing. I imagine that once the children were clever enough to find their way here, they were deemed ready to begin their studies-”
“Poor little mites,” Corson put in sympathetically.
“It was probably part of their initiation, the approach to wisdom. We were a sad lot of fools to think that the riddles might lead to anything else. What treasure but knowledge does one put into the hands of children? What other power can be shared with all, but never lost? Who can measure the worth of such riches?” She gazed at the precious books as if they might turn to dust and smoke if she turned her eyes from them. “Look, this is Threnn’s translation of Jostyn Vahr’s Treatise on the Manifold Ills of the Flesh, all seven volumes! The man knew more about diseases of the inner organs than anyone who’s ever lived. For years I’ve been seeking just for scraps of the Fourth Book-I didn’t think the last three still existed! There are books here that I’ve only read of in ancient commentaries. And there are recent works too-here’s Raine of Tierelon’s Account of His Sojourn Among the Wolf-Folk, and the First Precepts of Isper the Mad…!
The Cymvelans must have been devoted to learning absolutely, both in body and spirit, to create such a complete collection of scholarship.”
Newt, grieving over his lost treasure, listened to her transports of rapture with heartfelt loathing-“How can you stand her?” he asked Corson, between clenched teeth.
“I can’t,” said Corson promptly, feeling some goodwill toward Newt for the first time. “It’s enough to wear away the patience of a stone. One day I’ll tie her neck in a knot, I promise you.”
Nyctasia paid no heed to either of them. “These must be taken out of here as soon as possible, to a dry, aired room-at least until I’ve had copies made.
Vahn, it will take me years just to record what’s been assembled here. I can’t think where to begin.”
Raphe shrugged. “We’ll have to begin by opening out the passageway, if you want to move all these aboveground. That will take some time.”
“But there must be an easier way in and out of here. They’d not have taken all that trouble every time they wanted to consult a book.”
Once they’d lit the torches along the walls, and the great lamp that hung from the center of the domed ceiling, they soon found the door they were seeking. It was half-hidden by the shadows, but had not been deliberately concealed. It was locked, however, and built of stout, unyielding oak.
“We’ll have to come back with axes,” said Raphe, when they’d tried Corson’s key without success.
Newt looked at him scornfully. “Any fledgling picklock could open this door,” he said, and turned to Corson. “Let me have the use of that clasp you’ve got in your hair.” He took it from her and knell before the lock, peering into it and muttering. “The trick,” he said, turning to the others, “is to get all the tumblers lined up at once. This lock’s more for show than protection. I don’t think they expected thieves down here.” He inserted the long pin of the clasp and gave it a practiced twist. There was a distinct click, and the door opened a bit. Newt rose, dusted his knees elaborately, and returned the clasp to Corson, with a bow.
But instead of a way to the outside, they found another, larger chamber, surrounding a strange round enclosure with windowless stone walls that reached to the ceiling. The entrance to the inner enclosure was a gate, wrought of iron and embellished with the mark of the Cymvelan Circle. Nyctasia thrust her lamp between the bars and saw a series of walled pathways that twisted and intertwined. “It’s the maze,” she said, “I wondered why we’d never found it.”
She tried the gate, but it was locked fast, “Newt, come here and-”
“No need for that,” Raphe called from the other side of the enclosure. “There’s an opening on this side, and more doors.”
They circled the maze to the point opposite the gate, and found an open archway to the enclosure, and two closed wooden doors equidistant from it, in the facing wall.
Newt had gone into the maze a little way, but quickly returned, fearful of losing the way, “This must be the way in, but then why-”
“The way out, more likely,” Nyctasia said. “I think the initiates were brought in at the other side and locked in. They were meant to find their way through the maze to this opening, and then to one of those doors, I suppose. What’s in there?” She thought she knew the answer, but she was reluctant to look.
Much to Newt’s disappointment, the first door they tried was unlocked. It opened into a long, bare room, hewn by hand from solid stone. No attempt had been made to smooth the walls or ceiling, but the floor had been worn level in places from the tread of many feet over the years. One such path led to a large altar, made of one rough, tall stone balanced on four short stone columns. The whole was set on a natural shelf of rock, so that it was elevated above the ground. There was none of the elaborate decoration or painting that adorned the building above, but no one doubted that this too was a temple of sorts.
Nyctasia shuddered. “Let’s try the other door.”
Newt had already done so, since the first door had yielded nothing he could spend or sell. But the second revealed only a set of broad, easily climbed stairs, leading upward. A few faint streaks of light pierced the gloom at the top.
The flight of stairs soon ended in a strange, curved corridor no wider than the stairs, not carved from solid rock, but built of stone and mortar. “We’re above ground,” said Nyctasia, “but where?”
“Probably in a keep of Castle Saetarrin,” said Raphe gloomily.
A few feet before and behind them was a stone wall, but on either side of the top step was a doorway covered with wood, and sunlight was seeping between the planks on one side. Corson lost no time in setting her back against the opposite side and kicking out the slats.
“It’s been boarded up for years,” said Raphe. “Of course the whole place was searched, but they only needed to uncover the main door to do that. I daresay no one thought to look inside the wall.”
The four of them were sitting on the low wall outside the bell-tower, regarding the doubly boarded doorway. It did not seem to conceal a thing, either from inside or outside the tower. The stairway could only be seen from the very threshold.
“Neither out of doors nor in,” sighed Nyctasia. “Perhaps the Cymvelans hid the way themselves. If they feared an attack they’d have wanted to protect the library.”
“The Cymvelans or the Saetarrin…” said Raphe.
“Or the slavers,” Corson suggested. “And if people did discover it, the slavers soon discovered them.” She shook her head. “When I think of all the trouble we went through-that awful crawl through the tunnel…” Her voice trailed off in disgust.
“And all for nothing!” Newt agreed in an aggrieved tone.
“This will make it much easier to reach the library,” Nyctasia said with satisfaction. “We’ve only to break open that inner doorway, and I can start removing the books at once.”
“Hurrah,” muttered Corson, seconded by Newt, who wished Nyctasia joy of them.
Their differences forgotten in their mutual dissatisfaction at the outcome of the adventure, the two went off to get drunk together.
Raphe stood and offered his hand to Nyctasia. “I’ll find you people to carry the books,” he promised. “The sooner it’s done the better, I think. It’s no wonder the structure’s unsteady if the ground’s not solid below, and half the wall’s hollow. The shoring underneath looked none too healthy either. You’ll have to take great care. I wouldn’t like to lose my new kinswoman almost as soon as I’ve found her. When you’re finished we’ll have to seal the whole place off-especially from the little ones. The chances that someone will come to grief are too great.”
Nyctasia agreed with him wholeheartedly, though she did not voice all of her reasons.