The Destruction of the Books Read Online Free Page B

ago.”
    “The cap’n didn’t know that.”
    Juhg stopped for a moment. His advent to Greydawn Moors had been almost thirty years before. As a dweller, he was still young, not even of middle age before he hit his fiftieth birthday. But thirty years was most of a lifetime to a human. Few humans probably still lived who remembered the story, and humans rarely lived on Greydawn Moors.
    “You’re right,” Juhg said.
    “Cap’n Attikus,” Raisho pointed out, “likes to run a tight ship.”
    Juhg knew that as well. During the past few weeks, Captain Attikus had impressed the dweller.
    “Even with what I said,” Raisho went on, “I doubt the cap’n would have taken ye on if’n it hadn’t been fer the Grandmagister talkin’ to him.”
    “Wick…” Juhg caught himself using the Grandmagister’s name with such familiar abandon and stopped at once. “The Grandmagister put in a good word for me?”
    “Aye.” Raisho nodded. “Several, in fact.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “I don’t think either the Grandmagister or the cap’n wanted much known about it. If’n I hadn’t been aboardship finishin’ up some sail an’ riggin’ repairs, why, I wouldn’ta known it either.”
    Juhg pondered that. Grandmagister Lamplighter had acted loath to lose him from the Vault. Was that an act? Was I really a mistake that he had made but couldn’t admit to? The questions pounded at Juhg’s mind. During the nearly thirty years he had been at the Great Library and studied under the Grandmagister and the other First Level Librarians, he had never felt as if he belonged.
    “Don’t get all caught up in them names an’ the circumstances of how ye came to be aboard Windchaser, ” Raisho said. “Ye’re aboard her, an’ ye’re doin’ a powerful good job of mendin’ sail an’ keepin’ the ship tidy. An’ Cook? Why, Cook says he’s never in all his days had a finer helper. Nor one who knew more recipes than him.”
    “That was a gracious compliment,” Juhg acknowledged. Not that Cook would ever bestow it upon me.
    “It were.” Raisho nodded, obviously feeling the conversation was once more safely out of treacherous waters. But being Raisho, he couldn’t leave it there. “What I was a-gettin’ at was that maybe ye ain’t as done with that part of yer life as ye thought ye was.”
    “I’m done,” Juhg said decisively, but he felt the declaration was more for himself than Raisho. Still, his inner turmoil would subside somewhat if his friend made no further mention of the Library.
    “The Grandmagister, why, he told Cap’n Attikus that ye was a natural to … to that trade. He seemed right sad to lose ye.”
    “And I was sad to lose him,” Juhg admitted. “But my life is not there on that island. After everything I’ve been through, Raisho, after everything I’ve seen and everything I’ve read, I want a bigger world.” He shook his head and lowered his voice in shame. “Librarians aren’t supposed to want that. They’re supposed to want books and tea and the occasional bowl of pipeweed.”
    “Mayhap,” Raisho said, nodding.
    “I can’t do that.” But he had wished that he could, pleaded with himself to be happy with a small life. He used the search for his missing family only as an excuse to leave, and guilt stung him over that. “Greydawn Moors is just too … too … small.”
    Raisho nodded for a moment and took up a chunk of pricklemelon. “Seems to me that the Grandmagister gets around a lot fer a dweller. Never heard of a Grandmagister afore him that left the island.”
    “Never,” Juhg agreed. Grandmagister Edgewick Lamplighter had been like no other head of the Vault of All Known Knowledge who had ever gone before. Juhg didn’t know the reason for all of Wick’s adventures to the mainland, but he knew the reason for some of them.
    When he had found Juhg, Grandmagister Lamplighter had been seeking the truth to the legend of the Jade Basilisk. Both of them had barely escaped from