The Path of Dreams

Chapter One-2

Maolmordha stopped, turning to face him, her face an unreadable mask.

“Remember what brought you to the fore, my dear. Nobody in my domain is immune. If she should not prove useful, you had better pray that you are beyond my reach.”

Maolmordhas eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “She shall succeed.” She pivoted with a flick of her blonde mane, and exited through the door, her protégé right on her heels.

The door slammed, and Garias relished the anger that had emanated from her. “Still an echo of the resentful girl she had been as a child, so much the better,” He chuckled as he strolled along. This day had its positive moments despite all that had happened.

One of the benefits of power and influence was that the wielder often had the opportunity to gather a significant amount of information, should one but have the desire to. Garias dismissed the pathetic Dukes, more concerned with their gold coins and pretty wenches. True power came through research and carefully laid plans, and for seasons had been gathering information on any event of significance, right back to the alleged forming of the world, which lesser beings believed to be the truth. Garias knew that if the world was formed in the way the stories told, that there would be some evidence of their tampering. The discovery of the focus in Ciaharr now had him wondering if this was the proof he sought, and whether or not it was related to the cavern in the forest that he could not penetrate. He knew that he would find the answer in his library, perhaps the largest single collection of scripts, tomes and scrolls outside any ducal collection. They collected books to impress others with their wealth and large, imposing rooms. He collected them because he valued the information.

The library was nearly the size of his beloved grand hall, but there was an obvious difference. The hall was grand in every respect, golden, bright and spacey, with the air of a throne room. The library was the complete opposite. Shelves crammed every conceivable space, some reaching twice as high as a man. If there was knowledge to be gained here, he knew it was merely a matter of time before he found the answers.

At length, he reached the doors of the library, monoliths looming over him guarding a treasure of information. It was ostentatious of him, but he loved the huge doors everywhere, even when they were not practical. With a lack of wizards, Garias did not open the main doors, but chose instead a side entrance through the servant's quarters. It amused him to sometimes come upon his servants unawares and find them not performing as they should. It often meant an object lesson involving the Golem, but then the Golem could always do with another soul to tap. That in itself would be a problem he would have to deal with, and he was sure that in the library he could track down the information that could at least lead him to somebody that he could use to control the destructive magic inherent in the Golems aura. Slipping quietly in through the door meant he had to pass through an antechamber which was packed full with useless rubbish. It was amazing to him the amount of pointless detritus humans could accumulate. Why a dried up orange would bring so much amusement to one of the menials he never knew, but to have a whole series of them, each one in a different stage of desiccation was beyond him. Still, he was not petty, and as long as the library was orderly, he was not the least bit bothered about one small antechamber. Emerging into the repository of his accumulated intellect, he was struck by the aroma that threatened to take him back to his youth, before he had had any aspirations. The musty smell was overpowering, and it took a bit of getting used to. Fortunately for them, the menials who maintained his great collection were hard at work cataloguing and arranging new additions to his growing base of knowledge. He may have had to rely on capturing wizards for their use of focusing, but he paid these people to look after his library, and they did their job well.

The sun filtered down from windows high up in the lofty ceiling, highlighting specks of dust in the air as it shone down to land on the rows of parchment below. The warmth glowed from the wood of the many shelves as the sunshine landed on them. It was almost enough to make Garias forget that he was the most feared man in the Duchies, and just another scholar. But not quite.

He approached one of the librarians. “Show me the listing of rare works from the southeast Duchies.”

The librarian turned away, a rare breach of respect, but one Garias was willing to forgo. “Would that be rural editions, or Ducal collections?”

“Collections, but of rural origin.”

“Here.” The librarian handed him a list.

“Take me to them.” Garias found himself being guided through the honeycomb of shelves. There was a raised walkway along one side of the library where new shelves had been added. From there it was possible to see the entire lower section of his collection. It was more like one of the mazes that the Dukes wasted a fortune on in construction, so that empty-headed ladies could wander and get lost, pursued by over-ardent suitors for a hidden tryst. But he had selected every one of the librarians personally from the Order of Knowledge; one of the Guilds noted for their affiliation to the God Jettiba, the God of life. They had memories like no other people, and were among the few beings tolerated. They served their purpose splendidly, and led him right to the book he had been hoping he would find. “The prophecies of Eimaj.”

“Would you like to know a little about it?”

“No. Leave me.”

Grasping the leather-bound tome tightly, he moved to one of the nearby tables and brushed away the paraphernalia from its surface, unmindful of the fact that the very same person that had brought him here and found his book had been working for several days cataloguing everything in this section. He never heard the small pleasantries tinged with extreme annoyance at what he had just done; he was a thousand leagues away, already digesting the text that had been scrawled on the pages contained therein. This tome was not the original, but a scribe had been paid a fortune to spend his life making copies of the original text, as the orders prized them highly. Some madman in the southeastern Duchy of Pahrain had scrawled the original. Now this Duchy was barely known for anything save its imports of rare material from far-off countries to the East. It was fortunate that a merchant had been travelling near the headwaters of the river Todya, and had discovered the tome. Some madman living at the base of Mount Eimaj, one of three extinct volcanoes, had been yelling for years at anybody who would pass near him about the Gods' methods of talking to mortals, and how they were not really gone, just waiting to be contacted. Most people dismissed the lunatic as insane, and left him well alone, but for some reason the merchant stayed and listened. Something in the manner of the madman made sense to the merchant, and he sat there for a full month writing the ravings down. At the end of the month he looked through what he had written, and found that it was more than a passable tale. The Lord of the small Duchy, a fat Duke that lived in the coastal backwater of Cuc decided to take a copy with him on a visit to one of the other Duchies, and the fame of the tome spread from the squabble that ensued for nearly a generation over possession of the piece. Now Garias had found all this out by means of another tome, one that described rare works of great potential, and he had demanded a copy. Of course, events had transpired to keep him away from his books until now; the discovery of the girl destined to wield the Tome of Law had consumed his every thought. He considered that maybe he was going about this the wrong way.

The tome in front of him consumed his interest now, and by the time he had read every last page the sun had passed from the lofty windows and far beyond the mountains to the West. The library was filled with the steady yellow glow of the focus stones used by the order of knowledge. One of the few focuses they believed in utilizing regularly, it meant that they could get more done. The night was a good time for study and contemplation, and Garias did not need sleep any more. He rose, leaving the tome he had been studying to the ministrations of the librarian, and exited the library. The book had given him an insight into his present issues that he could have got from no other place. He headed straight for his tower, whispering through the corridors like some pale wraith. He needed to be where he could contemplate his thoughts with no chance of being disturbed. Even the quietest librarian was a distraction at his age.

Reaching his private rooms, Garias bolted his door, only finding after he had done so that Armen was already present. “How do things progress?” he asked, his surprise masked with a cold stare.

“Word has been sent. Your allies, whoever they are, approach even as we speak.”

Garias reclined in his seat with the company of a goblet of Ardican wine and the focus stones he kept to hand. It was enjoyable to revel in his underling's discomfort; Armen had no idea of who he spoke. ”They will come in very useful.”

“Is that the book?”

“It is a book.” As Armen stewed, Garias continued. “The Eimaj prophecies were indeed a revelation to me, assuming they are accurate. The madman believed that each of the Gods had His or Her own special place; a shrine one could almost call it. In that place they had what the madman, who was convinced that one could communicate with the Gods, had called a Grand Focus.”

“Does it say where?”

There was no record of the locations despite the words. He had to ask himself why there would be a source of power in such a place as he had seen. It did not fit the surroundings. He had long suspected that there was something of that ilk in the forest chamber, hence the reason he had tried to invade it with magic and manpower. All that had proved to him was that force would yield him nothing.

“It does not matter. I am not after contacting Old Law Gods. My goal is the Tome, and anything beyond that is my providence alone.”

“But this distortion. It is open and unprotected, and ripe to be explored, if not abused.”

Armen made sense. “So be it. I will send Maolmordha and the girl. It would take them a while to get there because they lacked the equilibrium gained by three running together, but they would get there eventually.”

“O'Bellah is closer.”

“You would have me trust that fool? The Golem is not an intelligent being, its lust for souls becoming an overpowering hunger that it cannot see beyond, but it is a genius compared to that one. Besides, if it went, the reek of evil would never aid me in doing anything constructive, so I am forced to use the one person I can trust.” Sipping his wine, and appreciating its subtle qualities, his eyes roamed over the collection of stones in his study. There was something else that he had read in the book that eluded him for a second. It was the briefest of passages, read at a point when he was skimming through the book. What was it? He thought back through his period of reading, trying to recall what exactly he had been doing when he read the particular passage. He had noted that the library could benefit from focus lights on the desk he was reading at, and then he had been annoyed at a page that had had to be prized apart from the next. Then it came to him. It was not the page after the page that was stuck, because that contained gibberish about some focus the gods used. It was the page after that.