The Tasters Guild Page 12

  And Rowan? Rowan would have been fine, had he not looked down.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Bitter Swill

  Actually, falling in the dark is probably the best way to fall.

  There is no scenery racing by to distract you. There is no view of where it is you are falling to. There is only the mad rush of wind. That, and the occasional bump as your body collides against the confines of the brick pit—and the ancient, broken ladder.

  The ladder! Rowan realized, as it struck the side of his cheek in passing. The next time he bounced against it, he was prepared. Somewhat. He managed to catch hold of it, but, like the rest of the sewer, it was slick and wet, and he lost it soon enough.

  It did eventually interrupt his fall.

  An old and rusted rung had come loose and stuck out, like a broken and dead branch. It was upon this that his robes caught, and the former taster had a moment in which to reflect upon the fact it was his robes that very well might have saved his life. But this thought was followed by a terrific rip, and Rowan found himself again falling, downward, ever downward—and into the river below.

  No more troubled waters had he seen than these. But see he did, for there was some sort of dull light now in the gaping opening into which he had fallen—a cavern that served mainly as a housing for a vast underground river, mostly storm runoff. A bitter swill, indeed.

  As he surfaced, spitting and gasping for breath, he saw what lay ahead. The waterway opened up somewhat into a wide underground lake. It flowed steadily against the sheer walls of rock and then bottlenecked in a mad rush of falling water. Beyond the drop-off—for that’s what Rowan was heading toward—was nothing but darkness.

  Chapter Forty-two

  The King’s Flower

  The roaring grew much louder as Rowan was swept along in the sturdy current toward the cascading, falling water. With a sickening feeling, he saw that what followed was a sheer, wet drop into nothingness. In desperation—and cursing the fact that he was not the most athletic of swimmers—he cast about the cavern looking for something to grab on to. Made from the rock of the mountains above, the walls were a sheer, smooth stone. Then, he saw it. A large, cluttered mound of debris to one side. With his last strength, he battled toward it.

  His robes clung to him heavily and he gasped for air, but aided by the current and utter strength of will, he made it to the perimeter. There Rowan clung to a maze of tangled waste. It was a watery web of clotted and decaying matter—branches, soggy term papers, a twisted and ruined tail feather of a vulture. The river surged by quickly, and it was hard to gain a foothold on the shifting matter, or anything of substance. His face was pressed roughly against an old shoe.

  As he contemplated his predicament, somewhere deep within him was born the urge to simply let go. Perhaps, this new voice reasoned, it would be easier to face the rapids than to continue on a journey certain to bring him further indignities. How impossible this task he had embarked upon! How utterly foolhardy to return here, to the Tasters’ Guild, delivering himself to his enemies. He allowed this thought to blossom in his mind like an invasive weed—and, as is the nature of such thoughts, it quickly grew, offering its defeating reasonings up to his tired mind.

  Verjouce, his distorted face, swam before him, a vision of ruin. He felt his fingers letting go of the web of deadwood.

  But something caught his eye. It was something quite impossible, and just atop the pile of debris in which he was tangled.

  A splash of green—of life. And from the thin green stem, more color, this time five petals of golden yellow.

  A cinquefoil!

  The King’s flower was growing very much as if for Rowan himself, growing against all odds in the bowels of the Tasters’ Guild. Somehow he found the strength to reach for it—and beyond. He pulled himself up, tired and dripping from the dark underground river, and heaving deep, grateful breaths, he lay beside the flower, and slept.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Malapert

  The Field Guide to the Poisons of Caux contains but a passage on the great and tragic loss of the contents of the Library at Rocamadour. Axlerod D. Roux did not dwell too long upon this sad part of Caux’s history, for his hand trembled and his heart ached too much as he wrote the text.

  The ancient fire of Rocamadour that even Hemsen Dumbcane cursed was ordered by the new and evil King Nightshade—but, like many other things, was actually the sinister idea of Vidal Verjouce. It destroyed nearly all the books in the famed Library, and the ancient knowledge that those magical books contained within. It doomed Caux to a fate of sorrow, for without knowledge, one is left only with folly.

  The fire was fashioned by Outriders: in their menacing silence, they gathered armfuls of the enormous tomes and threw them in a growing pile. But the flame was cast by the trembling hand of the Librarian.

  Oh, to go against one’s character in such an evil act as that! To be charged, as a librarian is, with the caretaking of knowledge—only to be the cause of its demise! It is a betrayal of one’s very nature—a poisoning of the soul.

  Deeply ashamed, the Librarian of Rocamadour, a man named Malapert but for whom names had now become obsolete, came to live in the cesspit beneath the city. He sought for himself the most miserable of existences—a penance for his evil deed. He built a small shack from a pile of nearby stones and took up a wet residence beside an underground gulch—finding a certain irony in his proximity to the antidote to fire.

  Fire and water. Doomed to this watery existence, the wretched soul of Malapert. The soul of the Librarian.

  The soggy tip of Malapert’s cane was poking at a suspicious lump of boiled wool. It hadn’t been there yesterday—nor even that very morning—and he wanted it away. But the Librarian was realizing now that things were more complicated than he had first thought. The boiled lump was moving about—and moaning. The boiled lump was a boy.

  “You there—” He continued his poking. He idly wondered what fate had brought the wretched creature down here, but this was not a compassionate thought. He was too soaked in misery for compassion. “Rise at once!” he ordered.

  Rowan was in fact dreaming.

  In his dream, Ivy was there, her eyes searching for him. But as he drew closer, they withered into distant knots—her skin was now a wrinkled brown. Ivy, Rowan dreamed, was becoming a tree. A great and wild one. And the tree struggled with him—pulling him rudely with her branches. Poking him repeatedly in the ribs. The tree, oddly, smelled of fire—of smoke.

  It was this smell that finally awoke Rowan, and it was Malapert who was the source of it.

  Rowan blinked at the strange and pathetic specter he now saw. The creature was stooped and clothed in the remnants of a robe, but one so ruined by fire that it was a miracle it stayed together at all. At regular intervals, his scalp showed through in places where his long gray hair refused to grow. And his skin—it possessed a particular sheen to it, and the texture was of melted wax.

  Rowan received another poke in the ribs and this time cried out.

  “Oww! What are you doing?”

  “None shall pass!” The Librarian leaned on his weapon and tried to stand tall.

  “Pass? I’m hardly moving!” Rowan pointed out.

  “I am the guardian of this waterway, and you are but a trespasser. I say again: None shall pass!”

  After one more prod, Rowan struggled to his feet. His side ached horribly.

  “Very well,” he said, looking about him. An uneven set of steps carved a jagged path in the rock wall, leading up to a dubious overhang. There, upon the precipice, Rowan now saw that the pile of stones he had glimpsed from the river was in fact a home of sorts, built haphazardly and threatening to fall down at any moment on top of their heads. “If you’ll just show me the way out …”

  Malapert blinked.

  “I don’t mean to trouble you, Mr.…? If you would just show me another way out. I can hardly go back the way I came, now can I?”

  Malapert opened his ruine
d mouth and snapped it shut again. He cocked his ear. A look of disbelief passed over his shiny face.

  “No—this is not possible,” he muttered, and crossly he escorted Rowan up the remaining pile of refuse, along the precarious stairs, to terra firma.

  There, a second source of dismay awaited the Librarian.

  For countless years he had lived a life of lonely exile, and not once had he had the trouble and bother of visitors. Yet, incredibly, twice in one day he had faced trespassers.

  “None shall pass!” he repeated a bit incredulously.

  But his warning was not to Rowan this time. Ahead, the lonely precipice of the Librarian’s home met the stone wall at a tunnel. In the opening stood Ivy, an enormous cat, and two trestlemen.

  Chapter Forty-four

  The Riddle

  Rowan!” Ivy ran across the bridge to where the taster and the Librarian were standing.

  “Rowan! I was sure—” She dared not finish her sad thought but instead rushed to hug her friend.

  “None shall pass!” Malapert’s cane stopped her in her tracks.

  “I—I’m not trying to pass. I just want to see my friend!”

  Malapert looked momentarily flustered but soon regained his menacing composure.

  “Back off, child!” He waved his ragged arms in his burnt cloak.

  Ivy ignored him.

  “How did you ever—?” She was trying to peek around the bothersome man, but with each attempt she was matched by him. This dance continued for a moment, until Rowan merely sidestepped Malapert, to the Librarian’s great chagrin. There was a great hug, followed by a painful gasp. Rowan’s side was bruised, and each breath seemed somehow incomplete.

  “Let me see.” His robes were torn on one side, and she examined this. “Deep breath—good. Nothing’s broken. You’re pretty banged up, though. Scrapes and scratches—and quite a splinter, I think.” She looked at it closer. “That’s probably a thorn from the hawthorn forest. I can get it out if you want. And you could use a bath.”

  “No kidding.”

  Axle and Peps had advanced along with the tattered cat, and everyone began chatting happily—talking over each other and embracing.

  The Librarian suddenly felt uneasy.

  Such joy disgusted him. Better to get them out of here as fast as possible.

  He cleared his throat.

  “None shall pass,” he tried again weakly.

  “Yes, yes, we know!” Ivy said.

  “Unless …”

  “Unless, what?” She was curious.

  “Unless you first answer my riddle.”

  Chapter Forty-five

  The Reply

  Ah! He had gotten their attention, he saw. Malapert looked around the bridge carefully and asked, “Are we agreed, then?”

  The Librarian took a step forward, toward the group, and for his efforts received a warning hiss from the mangy cat. Malapert hissed right back.

  “We are agreed,” Axle spoke.

  Had Malapert been a more perceptive sort (he had lived a life entirely devoted to literature, until his undoing), he would have seen a strange look pass over the trestleman’s face. But the Librarian was currently enjoying a dramatic pause before his challenge, and in this pause he congratulated himself upon the insoluble nature of his special riddle, one that he had carefully composed over his many lonely years. No one had ever before answered it.

  “Is that you—Malapert?” Axle asked, incredulously wiping away the grime from his pince-nez and replacing it. “You are alive!”

  The riddle stalled upon the burnt man’s tongue.

  “It is you! I knew it!” Axle stepped forward and clapped the old man upon the back. A puff of disintegrating cloth swirled about the gesture, smelling fiercely of fire, and was gone.

  It had been countless years since the Librarian had thought his own name, let alone heard it spoken. Nevertheless, he was not one to let a good riddle go unasked. Stepping away from the small trestleman, the Librarian raised his head high.

  “What is never hungry but always eating?” Malapert asked, voice loud and obstinate. He directed his gaze at the girl before him.

  Ivy had been watching the curious exchange between Axle and the stranger and was caught off guard.

  “Er—Could you repeat the question, please?”

  The Librarian obliged.

  “What is never hungry but always eating?” Ivy reiterated thoughtfully. She turned to Rowan, conferring.

  “Pigs eat a lot,” Rowan, the son of a pig farmer, offered. “Even when they’re not hungry.”

  “I think it’s something less obvious. It is a riddle, after all.”

  “Let me think.” Rowan stalled. He tried to recall his years of taster training.

  “Malapert—” Axle would not be put off. He tapped the Librarian on the backside again insistently. “Certainly you must remember me—Axlerod D. Roux? You were always so thorough and knowledgeable—a great help in my research. A true professional. I owe you a debt of gratitude—I always intended to thank you—but, well, in light of the events, I never could make it back to Rocamadour. Pray tell me, how did you come to be … here?”

  Malapert sighed. It seemed there was no discouraging this tiny man. He looked about the group. The water passing below them gurgled. And in that inexplicable way that enlightenment arrives, as if offered down from above, delivered intact, whole and at once, Ivy suddenly realized she knew the answer to Malapert’s riddle.

  “A serpent—devouring its own tail!” she said brightly. “The ouroboros is the answer to your riddle!”

  Chapter Forty-six

  Tea and Sympathy

  The fact that the girl had cracked his riddle so quickly, combined with the insistent small man repeatedly saying his old name, finally brought Malapert to tears. He broke down swiftly, soot and ash streaking his ruined face. He cried bitterly. He cried for so much loss, so long ago.

  And then, with a great sob, he invited the visitors to tea.

  Malapert’s hut was not designed for guests—it was, in fact, not designed for human habitation—and luckily the small, smoke-stained pile of rocks upon which he brewed his tea lay scattered before the wrecked entrance. In a dented old basin, the Librarian poured some foul water and settled it atop a few burning coals.

  Except for the occasional Outrider, the Librarian had seen no one from the world above for the entire Nightshade regime, and since Outriders were not conversationalists, Malapert knew nothing but his own misery. He found now that there was room in his broken heart for wonder, and he was happy—or, to be more precise, he was not unhappy—to hear what events he had missed after the fire. As Axle and Peps caught him up, Ivy and Rowan had time for a quiet word.

  “There—you see it?” Rowan pointed down the awful steps to the small, delicate cinquefoil.

  Ivy squinted into the gloom.

  “Yes!” Ivy gasped. “Yes, I do! It’s a sign, surely. They grow only in the presence of magic.”

  Uplifted, she turned again, examining the haphazard construction of Malapert’s home behind her. It was a teetering disaster, made from unusually fine stone blocks. The Librarian had, inexplicably, hung some dirty rags to dry along a frayed line, and these drooped depressingly to one side of the shack. A vague chill ran up her arms as she realized the stones of the hut were distinctly familiar.

  “Rowan!” she cried, grabbing her friend’s arm. “Look! Malapert’s house! It’s made from—”

  The pair moved forward quickly, Ivy nearly pulling Rowan along.

  “Bearing stones!” the taster realized.

  “Yes! I am sure!”

  Racing over to the shack as best she could, she ran her hands along the enchanted Verdigris stones. Once everywhere, they were a beacon to those who found themselves lost, pointing the weary traveler in the direction of home. Ivy had come across several forgotten ones in her travels to Templar, and they had been just as uplifting. She knew the evil King Nightshade had had most of them impounded, feeling anything
from the previous King to be contemptible, and Malapert was the inadvertent benefactor of this roundup.

  But Ivy knew one thing that King Nightshade did not. It was the magical nature of the stones that as they were moved, so, too, changed the information etched across their smooth sides. Written in a fine script, a scrawl repeated a thousandfold on each and every stone of the Librarian’s hut, was this:

  ½ knarl to Pimcaux

  Pimcaux.

  Such is the power of a single word. It was written on some stones in small letters and on others quite grandly—here in a dazzling font, and there in plain, practical letters—sideways, upward, and then on the diagonal (for Malapert’s home was not one to follow a clean line). Seeing it now as they did, announcing itself over and over again, the two weary travelers burst into broad smiles.

  The visit to Malapert produced one other thing of note.

  Axle and Peps listened with wide eyes as the Librarian described his last minutes beside the vast fire—engulfing so many enchanted and irreplaceable books from the Good King’s reign. As Malapert saw them all succumb to the flames, saw ribbons of angry orange slither across the illuminated pages, he felt in his very soul the wrongness of this act. He saw the dense, magical texts he had guarded for so long turn a sinister, inky black before finally drifting off to ash. And that was when he found his feet working seemingly without his knowledge, for he was suddenly within the awful burning mass, frantically saving what he could and suffering greatly for his regret.

  “What little I managed to save I hid in the catacombs,” Malapert confessed. “In the oldest crypt beneath the city. The Book of the Ouroboros is there.”