The Library of Anukdun (Legend of the White Sword Book 5)
The
Library
of
Anukdun
Legend of the White Sword – Book 5
Legend of the White Sword:
Ivy’s Tangle
Ivy’s Bind
Ivy’s Blossom
Knight’s Haven
The Library of Anukdun
Bones of Titans (forthcoming)
Other books by P.D. Kalnay
The Arros Chronicles:
The Spiders of Halros
The High Priestess
Jewel of the Empire (forthcoming)
The Alien Documentaries:
Resurrection
Retribution (forthcoming)
Redemption (forthcoming)
Children’s Books:
Burn Bright
The First Puddlegineer
The
Library
of
Anukdun
Legend of the White Sword – Book 5
P.D. Kalnay
Misprint Press Publishing
Copyright © 2017 P.D. Kalnay
ISBN: 978-0-9950515-8-4
Cover design by P.D. Kalnay
Author Website: www.pdkalnay.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.
Contents
Chapter 1 – Reunion
Chapter 2 – Lending a Hand
Chapter 3 – A Double-edged Sword
Chapter 4 – The Fallen Ogre
Chapter 5 – The Maelstrom
Chapter 6 – Kraken
Chapter 7 – Iron Vine
Chapter 8 – Pilot
Chapter 9 – Conspirators
Chapter 10 – The Hanging Garden
Chapter 11 – The Wheel Turns
Chapter 12 – A Free Lunch
Chapter 13 – The Grand Bazaar
Chapter 14 – A Silver Shackle
Chapter 15 – Seven Swords
Chapter 16 – A Binding Pact
Chapter 17 – The Shattered Reaches
Chapter 18 – Lightening the Load
Chapter 19 – Felclaw
Chapter 20 – A Warm Reception
Chapter 21 – A Dirty Getaway
Chapter 22 – Necromancer
Chapter 23 – Mouth of the Dun
Chapter 24 – Tragraal
Chapter 25 – Bookston
Chapter 26 – The Scholars’ Gate
Chapter 27 – Searching the Stacks
Chapter 28 – Wisdom and Wonders
Chapter 29 – The Hall of Oracles
Chapter 30 – Prisoners of Anukdun
Chapter 31 – Stormshadow
Chapter 32 – Book Burner
Chapter 33 – Flight of the Phoenix
Chapter 34 – Moonborn
Map of the Southern Shogaan Empire
Chapter 1 – Reunion
Ivy and I rode in silence to the tall sea gates of Knight’s Haven. We’d had rough days. She’d been poisoned, kidnapped, and locked in a box. I’d been betrayed, battled a clan of assassins, and chopped off my left hand.
Like I said—rough days.
To say we were tired would understate our weariness. I slowed at the closed gates, feeling trepidation, until they opened just wide enough to allow my small boat to pass. A sizable fire burned straight ahead on the far shore, and orange flames coloured the calm waters of the harbour.
We hadn’t spoken for the final leg of our journey home.
Ivy broke the silence, “Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you want to go to the Great Library of Anukdun?”
It was a good question. That she didn’t know the answer highlighted how bad I’d let things get between us.
“Sirean came back a few months ago, right after you left. She said the secret to returning Mr. Ryan might be there.”
“Why didn’t she obtain that knowledge herself?”
I explained about the prisoner under the library who held the answers we needed and who would only negotiate with me. He was the same guy who’d betrayed Janik Whiteblade in the first place, leading to his banishment. Ivy pondered that as we made our way across the harbour. The fire grew as we approached the city’s shoreline.
“Then we must go,” Ivy finally said. “It will be a dangerous journey.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“Why are you laughing?”
Ivy frowned half-heartedly at me.
We’d almost crossed the harbour before I got a hold of myself, “How much more dangerous can it be?”
Ivy shrugged. Knight’s Haven hadn’t proven to be a particularly safe place to live.
“You still know little.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. I’d learned many new things in the year I’d lived there. Maybe she didn’t realise—because of our separation.
“This island is isolated from—and unlike—the rest of the world. Few creatures live here, and none are dangerous. Even the plants are only ones brought here for cultivation. The people are mainly refugees, and they keep little of the cultures or the traditions of their homelands. I think it fair to say that you have seen as much of the First World, living here, as I saw of the Seventh, staying at Glastonbury Manor.”
Ivy was mostly ignorant about Earth, and I would never have let her wander off alone in a big city without me… if it’d been a choice. I had spent my time learning about enchantments, crafting things, and the life of Marielain Blackhammer, but almost none of it learning about the world in general. I didn’t even know the names of the plants, bugs, or birds on Knight’s Haven. Ignorance I determined to rectify. Ivy had a better chance of navigating a subway than I had of finding my way anywhere on her world.
“You’ll have to teach me,” I said, “if you want to?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to?”
I felt too tired to have that conversation, but I’d waited months to speak with Ivy. I stopped the boat a hundred yards shy of the shoreline. The sun had set, but the three moons were full, and the calm waters below reflected the stars burning brightly above.
“You haven’t wanted to talk for a long time,” I said. “Which I understand—I was a jerk. But now we’re free of the vine, and if you want… you can be free from me too. You don’t even have to stay here.”
Ivy stared at me for an uncomfortably long time without speaking.
“I forgave you after a week,” she finally said. “Then I waited for you to apologise again and ask me to return home. You never did–”
“I sent you lots of messages. They all had apologies, and they all asked you to come back.”
Most had been little more than my begging her to come home.
“I received no messages,” Ivy said.
“I sent a moth every day for weeks, until Lyrian…”
Damn it, I really was an idiot.
“Until she what?”
“She said she’d spoken to you, that you didn’t want to see me, and that my messages were upsetting you. She said I should stay away and give you time to cool down…”
“I expect she intercepted them.”
“Yeah.” That was obvious now. “I guess she wanted to keep you isolated, so you’d be easier to grab.”
“I shall punish her, when next we meet.�
��
Ivy’s necklace had developed a slight glow.
“It’s a little late for that,” I said.
“What do you mean? Has she escaped the island?”
“I sort of already killed her—by accident.”
There were some words I never thought I’d say.
“How did that happen?”
I told Ivy of Lyrian’s ultimatum to kill her if I didn’t surrender, and how I had just meant to scare her with my knife.
“I suppose that must suffice. It’s hard to imagine a worse fate than falling to that weapon and being torn from the cycle of rebirth.”
“Do you think it did that?”
“I am mostly certain, yes. I suspected it of the clansman Jellan. Your knife was a terrible thing.”
“Well, it’s gone for good too.” I looked at my stump. “I mean it though, if you don’t want to stay with me, you don’t have to.”
I waited, terrified of her answer.
“You’ve changed, Jack, but it wasn’t unexpected. I told you that you would when you first arrived.”
“I know I’ve made mistakes, and screwed things up, but I don’t think I’ve changed.”
Saying I’d changed would be making excuses for my behaviour.
“You have,” Ivy insisted. “Two and Three said you’ve become more like Marielain Blackhammer with each passing day–”
“You talked to them!” Two and Three had watched over Ivy since she’d left. Neither mentioned any conversations or that she was aware they were watching. “They never told me.”
“I asked them not to speak of it. You gave them their freedom, so they had that choice. Their company was a comfort to me. We spoke most often of you.”
Huh, I’d never guessed, and it was painfully obvious that she didn’t know of Three’s death.
“They told me of your isolation and obsession with mastering the arts of enchantment. Two said she hadn’t been sure you were Marielain Blackhammer at first, but that any doubt vanished after watching you for a time. As I said, I expected you to change… Marielain Blackhammer was a great man–”
“He was an arrogant jerk; he let the people he cared about go without a fight, and ended up alone in that shop, obsessed with his work.”
That did sound like me, now that I considered it. I’d only thought of Ivy when I wasn’t working on things, and had thought of her less often as time passed. With her sitting across from me that seemed unbelievable, but it was true. I had changed… and not in a good way.
“How did you learn so much about him?” Ivy asked.
“Three contained his personal journals. I was listening to them since I finished him.”
“Contained?”
“He tried to stop them from taking you and–”
“No!”
Ivy threw herself blindly into me, and wept in my arms for a second time that evening. I hadn’t shed a tear for Three, and it only reinforced how cold I’d become over the last year. I hadn’t noticed the changes or made any effort to stop them. Eventually, Ivy moved back to her own bench.
“I don’t think bringing him back is as simple as fixing his body,” I said.
“No, Marielain Blackhammer didn’t create One, Two, or Three; he merely built homes where their spirits could reside. Three has returned from whence he was drawn.”
An awkward silence followed.
“You can think about it,” I said. “About us... I’d totally understand.”
“What do you want?”
I’d half forgotten that answer for a little while, but now I remembered it, “You.”
“Then I suppose I shall stay. I promised to help Mr. Ryan return to this world. It’s important to keep one’s promises.”
“That’s true,” I said.
Ivy hadn’t answered my question, but I didn’t want to push it. It was enough just being with her. I started the pump again, bringing us alongside the stone wharf where my boat usually lived. Dozens of lights showed in windows, visible from the harbour, but none were down by my old boatyard. A huge fire burned near the middle of the warehouse district, and I wondered what it might be. Most of Havensport was empty… and even emptier after the day’s events.
“There are fewer auras in the city,” Ivy said.
I’d forgotten how sensitive she was to living things.
“The clansmen killed townsfolk today, along with most of the knights. There are less than ten left at the Hall.”
“Let’s investigate the fire, Jack.”
I felt drained and wanted to go straight home, but we walked along the road rimming the harbour toward the central pier instead. It was basically on the way, anyway. Hundreds of people surrounded a bonfire that filled the middle of the big square between the end of the main road and the start of the pier.
“I wonder what they’re doing.”
Firewood remained a scarce commodity on the island.
“They are burning the bodies of the dead,” Ivy said.
“Is that a standard funeral here?”
There were many races represented in the crowd.
“It’s not uncommon and is prudent given the circumstances.”
“Prudent?”
“Yes. A necromancer could make use of the dead if he or she were powerful enough. That is an unlikely, but not groundless, fear.”
“There are necromancers?”
That was new.
“Few, but they are feared with good reason,” Ivy said.
When we were close enough, I saw bodies burning atop the pile of brush and logs. All eyes were on the blaze, so Ivy and I went unnoticed at first. Then the low wails and sobs coming from the crowd fell silent. I heard ‘Blackhammer’ being whispered across the square as a crowd’s worth of eyes turned toward us. It was pretty awkward. Then it got more awkward. As one, the crowd bowed in our general direction; some people knelt, and a few prostrated themselves.
“Ivy,” I whispered. “You have any idea what’s happening?”
Before she could answer, a tall Valaneese man, in scorched and torn robes, left the crowd. He bowed a second time before speaking.
“Prince Jakalain, we have never met. I am Baaket Anar, recently elected mayor of Havensport.”
“Havensport has a mayor?” I asked.
“It didn’t, until a few hours ago,” Baaket said. “Most of us are now free from our contracts with one or another of the knights.” That made sense, what with most of those guys being dead. “The forming of a civil legislature and handling matters of local commerce was ever the right of the free citizens of Knight’s Haven. We wish to thank you for saving us.”
I had nearly reached the end of a really long day, and I had nothing to say to that. Ivy elbowed me in the side.
“No problem,” I said. “Hopefully, things will go smoother from now on.”
Public speaking isn’t one of my talents.
“Indeed, your highness. I hope that we may all continue to be good neighbours.”
Kind of a weird thing to say.
“OK,” I said. “We’re gonna go home now.”
Baaket bowed again, and Ivy and I headed up Embassy Way, the main street of Havensport, leaving the silent crowd in our wake. I didn’t speak until we were a few blocks away.
“That was weird.”
“Those people are terrified,” Ivy said.
“Understandable, after a day of assassins roaming the streets, murdering people.”
“They are terrified of you, Jack.”
“Me?”
“Every man, woman, and child in that crowd fears you. What else happened today?”
“I told you, I used the knife. I killed a bunch of the clansmen–”
“How many?”
“Not sure. Some of it’s fuzzy.”
“And…”
“The last thirty or so retreated and committed suicide on the street in front of the Hall. I have no idea why.”
“Likely to avoid being destroyed by your knife,” Ivy said. “Any death wou
ld be preferable. Those people looked at you like you were a hungry dragon. There must be more.”
“I was naked for part of the day…”
“Quite a sight, no doubt—but surely nothing to inspire terror.”
“I was also on fire and a bit lightningy.”
“Lightningy?”
“Covered in electricity, across my wings. The more I used the knife, the stronger I became. Somehow I sucked up power from the sky and the earth too. It’s a little fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I never threatened anybody else.”
“You merely walked the streets, sending unknown numbers of deadly killers to oblivion, while naked, on fire, and—lightningy?”
“Yeah, I guess that about sums it up.”
“Their terror is a great mystery.”
Chapter 2 – Lending a Hand
Our walk back to the apartment was sombre. One and Two stood waiting for us on the other side of the main doors.
“Mistress, you’re safe,” Two cried out when she saw Ivy.
Ivy knelt as a golden, winged, miniature version of herself barreled into her for a metallic hug.
“I’m fine,” Ivy said. “I can’t believe Three is gone.”
“He was proud to fall in your defence,” One assured her.
“Where is he?” Ivy asked.
“In the parlour,” One said. “We were uncertain what to do with his body.”
“Do whatever he’d have wanted,” I said. They’d know better than I, regarding Three’s wishes.
“I want to say goodbye to him first,” Ivy said.
We went into the apartment, and Ivy knelt beside Three and cried. I’d spent plenty of time with him as he recited Marielain’s journal, but I’d never thought of him as a proper person. I felt like a monster, watching Ivy cry.
“I’ll sleep now,” Ivy said. “None of your wounds are serious. I will heal you tomorrow.”
She looked around at the apartment, and her expression changed from one of sorrow to one of disgust.
“This place is a mess.”
Dirt covered the floors and dead plants hung everywhere like desiccated roses inside the mausoleum from a horror movie. Ivy closed her eyes, hummed tunelessly, and green spread from her bare feet as the moss and vines came back to life around us.