The Destruction of the Books Read Online Free

to Raisho’s face. “I know. I know.” He waved Juhg’s warning away. “All this secrecy, it’s just easy to ferget, ye know.”
    “No,” Juhg said distinctly, “it’s not.”
    “Aye. Perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s just me.”
    “And perhaps it’s the ale,” Juhg suggested.
    “I was just of a mind to celebrate, is all.” Raisho pushed his ale mug away, then folded his arms across his chest petulantly. “Wasn’t exactly me fault ye weren’t in the first tavern I went a-lookin’ fer ye in.”
    “No,” Juhg said agreeably. “I suppose it wasn’t. And I suppose there were a half-dozen such establishments between that one and this one.”
    “I don’t know,” Raisho agreed guiltily. “I didn’t count.”
    Juhg didn’t want his friend to feel too badly. Raisho’s mistake was less than if he’d drawn attention by writing in the journal. Juhg used his knife to nudge a flutterfish fillet toward the young sailor.
    Raisho took the fillet in his fingers, tilted his head back, and dropped the food into his mouth. He chewed contentedly. “I thought ye knew all about Kelloch’s Harbor from them—” He stopped himself before he said books .
    Before leaving Greydawn Moors, Juhg had prepared for his journey by choosing the ship he would secure passage on. From there, based on his knowledge of Captain Attikus’ normal trade routes, Juhg had assembled a book regarding conversations he’d had with sailors who had frequented the taverns along the Yondering Docks.
    “The knowledge that I had,” Juhg said, “was good enough to prepare a modest trade venture, but there is so much that was left out of my … sources.”
    “So ye’re figurin’ on remedyin’ that? With yer own efforts?”
    Juhg pondered that. He didn’t have an actual reason for all of his writing. He just couldn’t seem to help himself. Still, Raisho’s supposition gave him at least an excuse for his efforts. “It seemed the thing to do. I can always send the … my work … back with another ship. Or with Windchaser. ”
    Shaking his head, Raisho asked, “Have ye given any thought to the possibility that ye weren’t through with yer work there? That maybe Grandmagister Lamplighter was right about yer callin’ an’ what ye was truly meant to be?”
    Quietly contemplating another bite of pricklemelon, Juhg said nothing.
    “I can see that ye have thought about all of that,” Raisho said a moment later. “Ye miss all them … Well, ye know what I’m talking about.”
    Juhg did indeed. Raisho’s deliberate nonuse of the word books resonated within him. The Vault of All Known Knowledge was the world’s repository of literature, of nonfiction and fiction. When Lord Kharrion had led the goblins across the world to pillage and loot, they had deliberately destroyed books. Vast libraries, some that had existed in fact and some that existed only in legend, were lost.
    Thousands of books remained within the Vault, though, and cataloguing them all had taken generations of dwellers in an attempt to put the collections to rights. Juhg missed the Great Library. All those years ago, the Builders had raised the structure so hurriedly that blueprints of the vast buildings and caverns did not exist. The wings and hallways and stairways meandered all across the mountaintop. The lower sections of the Library stood honeycombed from the Knucklebones Mountains up above the Ogre’s Fingers. Some dweller historians continued to maintain that the Builders had constructed part of the island from the body of a giant ogre Lord Kharrion had ensorcelled into his service.
    Those events had taken place during the dark times known as the Cataclysm. Even now, after all those centuries had passed, the books gathered in the Vault of All Known Knowledge remained zealously guarded by the dweller Librarians, as well as the elves and the dwarves who lived there.
    “I couldn’t stay there,” Juhg said.
    “Grandmagister Lamplighter made a home fer ye,” Raisho