A Book Worth Reading
"You have met Prince Elbereth?" Headmaster Avery Schell asked Cadderly as soon as the young scholar entered Dean Thobicus's office. The large headmaster rubbed a kerchief across his blotchy face, huffing and puffing almost continually as his bloated body tried to pull in enough air. Even before the advent of the chaos curse, Avery had been a rotund man. Now he was obese, having gone on a gluttonous spree along with several other of the Edificant Library's most prominent eaters. In the throes of the chaos curse, some of those priests had literally eaten themselves to death.
"You must take longer walks each morning," offered Headmistress Pertelope, a neatly groomed, graying woman with hazel eyes that still showed the inquisitive luster more common to a much younger person. Cadderly carefully considered the woman, standing easily by Avery's side. Pertelope was the young scholar's favorite instructor, a wistful, often irreverent woman more concerned with common sense than steadfast rules. He noted her long-sleeved, ankle-length gown, bound tightly about the collar, and the gloves that she had been wearing every time Cadderly had seen her since the chaos curse. Never before had Pertelope been so modest, if it was indeed modesty that kept her so covered. She wouldn't talk about it, though, to Cadderly or to anyone else; she wouldn't talk about anything that had occurred during the time of the curse. Cadderly wasn't overly concerned, for even with the new wrappings, Pertelope seemed her old mischievous self. Even as Cadderly watched, she grabbed a handful of Avery's blubber and gave a playful shake, to the incredulous stares of both Avery and Dean Thobicus, the skinny and wrinkled leader of the library.
A chuckle erupted from Cadderly's lips faster than he could bite it back. The stares turned grave as they shifted his way, but Pertelope offered him a playful wink to comfort him.
Through it all, Prince Elbereth, tall and painfully straight, with hair the color of a raven's wings and eyes the silver of moonbeams on a rushing river, showed no emotion whatsoever. Standing like a statue beside Dean Thobicus's oaken desk, he caught Cadderly's gaze with his own penetrating stare and held the young scholar's attention firmly.
Cadderly was thoroughly flustered and did not even notice the seconds passing by.
"Well?" Avery prompted.
Cadderly at first didn't understand, so Avery motioned the elven prince's way.
"No," Cadderly answered quickly, "I have not had the honor of a formal introduction, though I have heard much of Prince Elbereth since his arrival three days ago." Cadderly flashed his boyish smile, the corners of his gray eyes turning up to match his grin. He pushed his unkempt, sandy brown locks from his face and moved toward Elbereth, a hand extended. "Well met!"
Elbereth regarded the offered hand for some time before extending his own in response. He nodded gravely, making Cadderly more than a little bit embarrassed and uncomfortable about the easy smile splayed across his face. Yet again, Cadderly felt out of his element, beyond his experiences. Elbereth had come with potentially catastrophic news and Cadderly, sheltered for all of his life, simply did not know how to respond in such a situation.
"This is the scholar I have told you about," Avery explained to the elf. "Cadderly of Carradoon, a most remarkable young man."
Elbereth's handshake was incredibly strong for so slender a being, and when the elf turned Cadderly's hand over suddenly, the young scholar offered only token resistance.
Elbereth examined Cadderly's palm, rubbing his thumb across the base of Cadderly's fingers. "These are not the hands of a warrior," the elf said, unimpressed.
"I never claimed to be a warrior," Cadderly retorted before Avery or Thobicus could explain. The dean and headmaster put accusing glares back on Cadderly and, this time, even easy-going Pertelope did not offer any escape.
Again, seconds slipped past.
Headmaster Avery cleared his throat loudly to break the tension.
"Cadderly is indeed a warrior," the robust headmaster explained. "It was he who defeated both the evil priest Barjin and Barjin's most awful undead soldiers. Even a mummy rose up against the lad and was summarily put down!"
The recounting did not make Cadderly swell with pride. The mere mention of the dead priest made Cadderly see him again, slumped against the wall in the makeshift altar room in the catacombs, a blasted hole in his chest and his dead eyes staring accusingly at his killer.
"But more than that," Avery continued, moving over to drape a heavy, sweaty arm over the young scholar, "Cadderly is a warrior whose greatest weapon is knowledge. We have a riddle here, Prince Elbereth, a most dangerous riddle, I fear. And Cadderly, I tell you now, is the man who will solve it."
Avery's proclamation added more weight to Cadderly's shoulder than the headmaster's considerable arm. The young scholar wasn't absolutely certain, but he believed he liked Avery better before the events of the chaos curse. Back then, the headmaster often went out of his way to make Cadderly's life miserable. Under the influences of the intoxicating curse, Avery had admitted his almost fatherly love for the young scholar, and now the headmaster's friendship was proving even more miserable to Cadderly than his former, too-strict actions.
"Enough of this banter," said Dean Thobicus in his shaky voice, his speech more often sounding like a whine than normal words. "We have chosen Cadderly as our representative in this matter. The decision was ours alone to make. Prince Elbereth will treat him accordingly."
The elf turned to the seated dean and dipped a curt and precise bow.
Thobicus nodded in reply. "Tell Cadderly of the gloves, and of how you came to possess them," he bade.
Elbereth reached into the pocket of his traveling cloak an action that pushed the garment open and gave Cadderly a quick glance at the elf prince's magnificent armor, links of golden and silvery chain finely meshed and produced several gloves, each clearly marked with stitching that showed the same trident-and-bottle design that Barjin had displayed on his clerical vestments. Elbereth sorted through the tangle to free one glove, and handed it to Cadderly.
"Evil vermin does not often find its way into Shilmista," the proud elf began, "but we are ever alert for its encroachment. A party of bugbears wandered into the forest. None of them escaped with their lives."
None of this was news to Cadderly, of course; rumors had been circulating throughout the Edificant Library since the elf prince's arrival. Cadderly nodded and examined the gauntlet. "It is the same as Barjin's," he declared at once, indicating the three-bottle-over-trident design.
"But what does it mean?" asked an impatient Avery.
"An adaptation of Talona's symbol," Cadderly explained, shrugging to let them know that he was not absolutely certain of his reasoning.
"The bugbears carried poisoned daggers," Elbereth remarked. "That would be in accord with the Lady of Poison's edicts."
"You know of Talona?" Cadderly asked.
Elbereth's silvery eyes flashed, a moonbeam sparkling off a cresting wave, and he gave Cadderly a derisive, sidelong glance. "I have seen the birth and death of three centuries, young human. You will still be young at the time your death, though you might live more years than all others of your race."
Cadderly bit back his retort, knowing that he would find little support in antagonizing the elf.
"Do not underestimate that which I, Prince of Shilmista, might know," Elbereth continued haughtily. "We are not a simple folk wasting our years dancing under the stars, as so many would choose to believe."
Cadderly did start to reply, sharply again, but Pertelope, ever the calming influence, moved in front of him and took the glove, shooting him another wink and subtly stepping on the young scholar's toe.
"We would never think so of our friends in Shilmista," the headmistress offered. "Often has the Edificant Library sought the wisdom of ancient Galladel, your father and king."
Apparently appeased, Elbereth gave a quick nod.
"If it is indeed a sect of Talona, then what might we conclude?" Dean Thobicus asked.
Cadderly shrugged helplessly. "Little," he replied. "Since the Time of Troubles, so much has changed. We do not yet know the intentions and methods of the various sects, but I doubt that coincidence brought Barjin to us and the bugbears to Shilmista, especially since each carried not the normal symbol of Talona, but an adapted design. A renegade sect, it would seem, but undeniably coordinated in its attacks."
"You will come to Shilmista," Elbereth said to Cadderly. The scholar thought for a moment that the elf was asking him, but then he realized from Elbereth's unblinking, uncompromising stare, that it had been a command and not a request. Helplessly, the young scholar looked to his headmasters and to the dean, but they, even Pertelope, nodded in accord.
"When?" Cadderly asked Dean Thobicus, pointedly looking past Elbereth's ensnaring gaze.
"A few days," Thobicus replied. "There are many preparations to be made."
"A few days may be too long for my people," Elbereth remarked evenly, his eyes still boring into Cadderly.
"We will move as fast as we can," was the best that Thobicus could offer. "We have suffered grave injuries, elf prince. An emissary from the Church of Ilmater is on the way, to make an inquiry concerning a group of his priests who were found slaughtered in their room. He will demand a thorough investigation and that will require an audience with Cadderly."
"Then Cadderly will leave him a statement," Elbereth replied. "Or the emissary will wait until Cadderly returns from Shilmista. I am concerned for the living, Dean Thobicus, not the dead."
To Cadderly's amazement, Thobicus did not argue.
They adjourned the meeting then, on Headmaster Avery's suggestion, for there was an event scheduled in the Edificant Library that day that many wished to witness and which Cadderly flatly refused to miss for any reason.