Chapter 10
When a sharp, foul stench struck my nostrils, I thought I was going to die of bad breath before I got chewed up. I tried to shield Mirry with my body as best I could and Pollo tried to keep up his shield for all of us. When the shield broke in a shower of sparks, I thought we were goners. The smell got worse, so bad that we all choked. We kept waiting for the monster’s teeth to chop us into pieces, but they didn’t. When I finally got enough nerve to open my eyes, I saw a long, worm-like tail slide along a stone floor behind the rump of a hard-plated animal. I watched like a drunken idiot as the monster lumbered over a girl who was standing in front of it with her nose wrinkling from the aroma.
“Maranissa!” I cried, running over to protect the maiden in distress, as if I could do anything to help anybody against that monster.
But Maranissa showed no sign of being in distress. By the time I was at her side, the monster had its muzzle deep in a pot filled with the foulest-smelling stew in the world.
“Don’t worry, that recipe is not for you,” said Maranissa. “Now, would you like to move away from here before our pet finishes its dinner and discovers that it’s still hungry?”
“Yes.”
The monster looked as tame as a pet dog while it was eating the meal prepared by Maranissa, but I knew that wouldn’t last for long.
“We’d better decide quick if we go for trees or for blossoms,” said Charles, keeping a wary eye on the slurping monster.
“For recipes, we start with the roots and move up to the flowers,” said Maranissa.
“Right,” said Charles. “It should be the same for healing substances.”
Charles ran his light over several shelves until he found a tree image to his liking. He blew it up and waved the rest of us to him. With Maranissa with us now, it was kind of crowded under Charles’ cape, but it was just for a few seconds before we ended up in something like a dark, indoor forest. The trees were gigantic, and each tree had many shelves built into them, filled with the usual assortment of papers, scrolls, books, what-have-you. The monster that had threatened us was far behind, and nothing else like it had greeted us this time.
“We are indebted to you, Maranissa,” said Pollo with a gallant bow.
“I am indebted to a Gifted Healer who took notice of me when another human tormented me,” said Maranissa, “but this same Gifted Healer deserved to be ground beef fed to an etheric beast for spurning my offer to help with his quest.”
I was glad that it was too dark for anybody to see me blush. I understood her point of view only too well. I had assumed that a cook’s apprentice was useless in so grand an undertaking as mine, and yet she was the one had saved the day.
“I—I’m sorry,” I stammered. “What you did was as brilliant as it was simple.”
“It’s also a good thing you gave me one of these clever light-makers,” said Maranissa, snatching her light and collapsing it back into a capsule. “Otherwise, I would never have found my way in the dark.”
“Am I correct in assuming that the etheric beast that obstructed us was not the sort of crawling, creepy, crusty, chitinous creature that you usually encounter in the Archives of Gifted Lore?” asked Pollo.
“I have never seen anything like it, neither have I heard of anything of the sort ever patrolling the Archives of Gifted Lord,” said Charles.
“Could that monster, then, be yet another sign that somebody, or many somebodies, wish that we not find the healing inscription that we seek?” Pollo asked further.
“That is the understanding that comes to me,” Charles replied.
“Then we need to be on the lookout for more crawling, creepy, crusty, chitinous creatures of the deep, don’t we?” said Mirry with relish.
“I should think so,” said Charles.
“I will put up a shield about us,” Pollo announced.
He sang a brief chant and I soon saw a shimmering light float like a bubble to indicate that that a shield was in effect.
“How did you get here?” I asked Maranissa, now that I had a chance to think about what had happened.
“What makes you think you choirboys are the only ones we make meals for?” Maranissa asked me in return. “Has it ever occurred to you that Gifted Archivists might want to benefit from our Gifted culinary artistry?”
“I see your point,” I replied. “Does Masteress Carrasima know what you’re doing?”
“She might.”
“How did you know where we were?” Pollo asked her.
“Denny told me,” Maranissa replied.
I remembered that Denny had sat in on our conversation when we decided to go after the inscription for the healing song ourselves.
“Why did Denny tell you where we were going?” Pollo asked.
“Because I shook his ribs loose and threatened to starve him if he didn’t.”
“I wonder who else he may have told,” said Mirry.
“That is a good cause for wondering,” said Maranissa uneasily.
“Are you sliding into the thought that we may have to guard against more than crawling, creepy, crusty, chitinous creatures?” asked Mirry.
“I’m sliding far past that thought, to speak for myself,” said Maranissa.
“If anyone tries to attack us, I can shoot fire jets at them with my harp,” Mirry boasted.
“One of my vows to the Guild of Gifted Healers is that I won’t hurt any person for any reason,” I said, uneasy at the thought of encountering violence.
“We don’t take a vow like that in the Guild for Gifted Singers,” said Mirry.
“I think we’re bound by the same values as those of the Guild for Gifted Healers if we are assisting on a healing quest,” said Pollo.
“What if we get attacked?” asked Mirry.
“Then we get attacked,” said Charles.
“Would you like to have your picnic sandwiches now, and then decide to get on with finding the inscription you came here for?” asked Maranissa.
“I think we’ll do well to discuss our next move, and have a bite to eat since it is on offer during the same span,” suggested Pollo.
“Good idea,” said Mirry, who was always hungry, it seemed.
I hadn’t even thought about being hungry myself until Maranissa mentioned it. It was obvious enough that Maranissa was going to feed us whether we liked it or not, and I was willing. What she handed out were hot sandwiches that were sort of like sloppy Joe’s, but spicier and yummier.
“Do you know if the windmere willow is a water tree, as some willows are?” Charles asked me.
“No idea,” I said.
As he munched on his sandwich, Charles moved his light carefully over several shelves. He scared off a gargoyle who didn’t wait to be driven off by a song, picked up a scroll, unrolled it, and read it carefully in his light.
“Hmm. Right. The windmere willow is a water tree. I can take us on our next searching leap in space now. I’m sure we can finish our sandwiches where we end up.”
Anxious as we were to find the inscription of the chant we needed, we readily agreed to let Charles move us closer to it. I felt the now-familiar sense of standing in the air and having the ground slide back under me again. The place where ended up was in the middle of a bunch of vines on the shore of a dark stream that was lined with more shelves filled with books and scrolls and all the other communications paraphernalia I’d seen elsewhere in the Archives. Charles frowned, and brightened his light to give us all a better look.
“Are we really looking at bookshelves carved out of tree roots?” asked Pollo.
That was my question, too, but I was afraid to ask it.
“Silence, please, I am in the midst of a meditative study,” said a man in a calm, but firm voice, “and that light is hurting my eyes.”
Charles dimmed the light and we all looked in the direction the voice had come from. In among the tree roots, an old man in a white cape sat cross-legged about a couple of feet above the ground. He was bald, but had a beard that came down to his stomach.
“The eyeful regard of another makes meditation and study more difficult,” said the man in the same calm tone of voice, not sounding the least bit angry.
I felt awkward about eating in front of him, so I just held my sandwich, wondering what we should do next.
“Would you like a sandwich?” Maranissa asked the man.
“Hmm. It has been a few seasons since I last had a snack,” said the old man. “Yes, I accept your gift of a sandwich.”
Maranissa handed it to the old man, and he started munching away about as meditatively as I suppose anyone could eat anything.
“What are two apprentices of the Guild of Gifted Musicians, one apprentice of the Guild of Gifted Archivists, one apprentice of the Guild of Gifted Culinary Artists and one apprentice of the Guild of Gifted Healers doing in the meditative spot of a Master in the Guild of Gifted Mystics?” asked the old man, heedless of how full his mouth was as he talked.
I waited for someone else to answer that question. At least I felt free to continue eating my sandwich. I had the odd sensation that the old man wasn’t looking at me even when he faced me.
“We are looking for the inscription of a healing chant of the windmere willow that will heal those stricken by the strangling pestilence,” Pollo answered.
“That is a worthwhile entity to be searching for at this instant,” said the Gifted Mystic, “but why are five apprentices making this momentous search?”
“Because Nathaniel is the only member of the Guild of Gifted Healers who has a Singing Gift, and we are the only ones willing to help him.”
“I see,” said the Gifted Mystic, “and I suppose you are now lost.”
“I fear so,” said Charles. “My last finding spell only brought me here.”
“I suggest you use the Singing Gift possessed by Nathaniel to lead you to the inscription you seek,” said the old man.
“But I don’t know the song for the windmere willow,” I protested. “That’s why we’re looking for the inscription.”
“You know the mode for willow trees, and you know the mode for water,” said Pollo. “Perhaps if you combine the two, you will guide Charles’ finding spell to the right place.”
“Your devotion is making you wise, young man,” said the Gifted Mystic.
Mirry pulled his harp out from under his cape and played a chord in the willow tree mode and then a chord in the water mode.
“Which mode should I start with?” I asked.
“Water feeds the tree,” said Maranissa.
“Right,” said Charles. “We’ll try it that way.”
“I don’t know what words to sing,” I said.
“I think it will suffice if you make up your own words as long as you use the name of the tree we seek information about,” Pollo suggested.
Mirry played the scale of the willow tree mode and followed it with the radical chord. Then I sang:
Willow Tree, willow Tree,
Windmere willow, willow Tree.
Lead us, willow Tree, Lead us,
Lead us to your root,
O windmere willow Tree.
To my surprise, the song sounded nice even to my ears, but nothing happened to get us closer to the inscription of the healing chant.
“You sing truly,” Pollo encouraged me. “Sing your song again, but try switching to the water mode in the third line.”
I sang the first two lines the way I’d sung them before, paused long enough for Mirry to play the chord that established the water mode, then tried to sing the last three lines in that mode. I didn’t quite get it. That wasn’t surprising, since we hadn’t thought to practice the water mode as much.
“Almost,” said Pollo. “Sing it again.”
Mirry played the water mode scale and I sang it after him to get it in my mind. Then I sang the song a third time. This time, I managed to sing the last three lines in the water mode without any mistakes and a flurry of sparks darted away from my cape. Charles threw his cape over the rest of us and I sang my song one more time. I had to really concentrate to keep on singing during that suspended moment until we were standing on something solid again, but I managed it. This time, we seemed to be at the mouth of a cave, only the wall of the cave was filled with books even older than the tree roots in this part of the Archives. The cave seemed to be built into the side of a cliff. I looked down in the darkness, shuddered, and turned back to the books.
“Might this be the place to look for the inscription?” I asked, my heart beating harder at the thought of finally accomplishing one leg of my quest.
“It is sweepingly likely,” said Charles.
Charles ran his light over the volumes, bringing up pictures of the strangest forms of vegetation I’d ever seen in my life. One plant looked like a seahorse, another looked like an upside down buzzard. Suddenly right between two hefty, dusty volumes, an image of a cream-colored flower with a dark purple in the middle and a bleeding pink at the edge showed up in Charles’ light. The light seemed to have settled on a few pieces of bark wedged in between the two big volumes.
“Is this it?” I asked.
“Maybe,” said Charles.
“It has to be,” said Mirry, as he crawled over next to me with Maranissa. “You’ve done it, Nathaniel!”
Charles tried carefully to pull out the pieces of bark, but couldn’t.
“I think you’ll have to pull these out,” said Charles.
I carefully put my fingers around the first piece of bark, but it was stuck to the shelf and I couldn’t lift it off any more than Charles could.
“Sing again the song that brought us here,” Pollo suggested.
Mirry pulled out his harp and played the first chord. As I sang it, I changed the words so that it added a line to the song:
Willow Tree, willow Tree,
Windmere willow, willow Tree.
Lead us, willow Tree, Lead us,
Lead us to your words,
Your healing words,
O windmere willow Tree.
This time, sparks exploded out of my cape and one of the pieces of bark slipped out and fell into my hand. I looked at the marks on it excitedly, but my heart sank when I could make neither head nor tail out of it. I handed it to Pollo.
“Can you makes any sense of this?”
Pollo examined the bark for himself for quite a long time as I waited, hardly daring to breathe. He grunted three or four times, his grunts getting more excited each time.
“Yes, I think I can figure out the notation and I think this is the inscription,” said Pollo as he handed it back to me.
“Thank you for picking out the inscription for me,” said a boy whose voice was all too familiar.
Too late, we found ourselves cornered by Denson, Jorland, Lorisal, and Carl. With chilling grins, they aimed their pipes at us, ready to fire.
“The inscription will do neither you, nor anybody else any good if you take it,” said Pollo.
“I will be the judge of that,” said Denson. “I am more Gifted as a singer than you seem to give me credit for.”
“All of the clans made a treaty to honor every healing quest made by members of the Guild of Gifted Healers,” said Charles.
“Your group of questers looks pretty Amber-like to me,” said Denson, “especially with as traitorous a Scarlet as Charles Worthington among you. I do not think it wise to trust this group to share the chant with the Scarlet Clan. Give me the inscription and I will cause no harm to any of you.”
Mirry whipped out his harp and aimed it at Denson. Charles raised a hand to strike in some way as well.
“Many people will die needlessly of the smothering pestilence if you take the inscription!” Mirry charged.
“According to the treaty,” said Denson with a frigid smile, “no one in a healing quest is allowed to use any violence toward anyone.”
Mirry lowered his harp and tucked it back under his cape. Charles lowered his hand.
“Your own clan will suffer as much as all the others,” Mirry warned.
“We shall see about that,” said Denson. “Nathaniel, hand me the inscription. Now. Or, would you rather find out what my special fire jet feels like when your friend’s weak etheric shield breaks down?”
“Don’t give it to him,” Pollo warned me.
Pollo didn’t have to tell me that. I was determined to die before I gave the inscription to Denson. But before I had a chance to say as much, I heard an ear-splitting chord and Jorland cried out in pain. A frightful wound spread over his face; it looked as bad as a first degree burn. A volley of fire jets flew over my head, but Denson had a shield up by then. He and Carl and Lorisal fired back over our heads to an attacker who was behind us. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Master Harold Galleon hold his keyboard sideways accordion-style and fire a volley of jets between its keys at our attackers. Seeing his shield weaken, Denson and his two healthy companions did not stay long enough to absorb Master Galleon’s onslaught. The flames petered out in the empty dark where the boys had been only a second before, leaving Jorland lying a couple of feet away from me, wounded and groaning. I turned round to thank Master Galleon for coming to our rescue, but before I could say anything, I heard a thump right next to me and then felt the inscription slip out of my fingers.
“Denny!” Mirry yelled. “Give it back!”
Mirry jumped the small boy and dragged him back in my direction. Master Galleon held up his keyboard, poised to use it on Mirry if he got a clear shot. What followed was the most horrible moment in my life til then. Mirry and Denny both cried out as they struggled dangerously to the edge of the cliff. I reached over to grab Mirry, but I was too late. They both fell over the edge into the dark stream below.